← Back to results
Vulnerability record · public intelligence
CVE-2020-24356
MEDIUM

Local Privilege Escalation in cloudflared

Published Oct 2, 2020 · Updated Oct 23, 2026 · Also known as GO-2022-0845, GHSA-hgwp-4vp4-qmm2

Severity · CVSSMEDIUM · 6.4
Known exploitationNot listed
EPSS / likelihood0.35%
QFinch risk scoreNot available

Original summary

Normalized public record · Updated Oct 23, 2026

Local Privilege Escalation in cloudflared

Publisher and source text is retained separately from QFinch interpretation.

QFinch assessment

In `cloudflared` versions < 2020.8.1 (corresponding to 0.0.0-20200820025921-9323844ea773 on pkg.go.dev) on Windows, if an administrator has started `cloudflared` and set it to read configuration files from a certain directory, an unprivileged user can exploit a misconfiguration in order to escalate privileges and execute system-level commands. The misconfiguration was due to the way that `cloudflared` reads its configuration file. One of the locations that `cloudflared` reads from (C:\etc\) is not a secure by default directory due to the fact that Windows does not enforce access controls on this directory without further controls applied. A malformed config.yaml file can be written by any user. Upon reading this config, `cloudflared` would output an error message to a log file defined in the malformed config. The user-controlled log file location could be set to a specific location that Windows will execute when any user logs in.

Evidence: public source records

Affected products

Affected scope reported by the available public evidence
Affected package, product or rangeFix status
Consult the referenced vendor advisory for affected versions.Consult source advisory

Matching a version is only one part of assessing exposure. QFinch has not assessed your environment on this public page.

Remediation

Apply the vendor-supported fixed release or mitigation, then verify the affected component is no longer reachable.

  1. Confirm the affected product and reachable code path exist in your environment.
  2. Apply the vendor-supported patch or mitigation from the primary advisory.
  3. Rescan the exact deployed revision and retain verification evidence.
Review primary references

Evidence coverage

CVENVDOSVEPSSGHSA
SSVC priority
LOW
Confidence
Not available
Aliases
GO-2022-0845, GHSA-hgwp-4vp4-qmm2

Scores appear only when corresponding evidence exists. Missing data is never interpreted as zero risk.

Sources and record history

  1. Security advisory ↗

Record history

Published Oct 2, 2020 · Last refreshed Oct 23, 2026