Reference page — cumulative record through Monday, October 19, 2026 UTC. Reference pages update as the archive grows; only dated daily editions are immutable pages of record.

CVE-2020-15778

CVE-2020-15778HIGH

n/a n/a — scp in OpenSSH through 8.3p1 allows command injection in the scp.c toremote function, as demonstrated by backtick characters in the desti…

  AV  AC  PR  UI  S  C  I  A   CVSS    EPSS   %ile   KEV
   A   L   L   R  U  H  H  H    7.4   .1368   96.5     —

AFFECTED
  Product  Versions  Fixed
  n/a      n/a –     —

TIMELINE
  Jul 15  Reserved by mitre
  Jul 24  Published (CNA: mitre)
  Oct 14  EXPLOIT PUBLISHED — CVE-2020-15778. Public exploit reference added.
  Oct 14  RESCORED — CVE-2020-15778. CVSS 7.8 → 7.4 (NVD).

CWE-78 · CNA: mitre · CVSS v3.1 · 7 references · NVD status: Modified

Description

scp in OpenSSH through 8.3p1 allows command injection in the scp.c toremote function, as demonstrated by backtick characters in the destination argument. NOTE: the vendor reportedly has stated that they intentionally omit validation of "anomalous argument transfers" because that could "stand a great chance of breaking existing workflows."

Lifecycle

Complete event history — 4 events, chronological
Date	Event	Detail
July 15, 2020	Reserved	Reserved by mitre
July 24, 2020	Published	Published (CNA: mitre)
October 14, 2026	EXPLOIT PUBLISHED	EXPLOIT PUBLISHED — CVE-2020-15778. Public exploit reference added.
October 14, 2026	RESCORED	RESCORED — CVE-2020-15778. CVSS 7.8 → 7.4 (NVD).

Affected

Affected products and packages — 1 row
Vendor	Product / Package	Ecosystem	Version introduced	Fixed
n/a	n/a	—	n/a	—

Weaknesses

CWE-78

References (7)

https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2024:3166 [Third Party Advisory]
https://cert-portal.siemens.com/productcert/html/ssa-398330.html
https://github.com/cpandya2909/CVE-2020-15778/ [Exploit, Third Party Advisory]
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25005567 [Third Party Advisory]
https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/202212-06 [Third Party Advisory]
https://security.netapp.com/advisory/ntap-20200731-0007/ [Third Party Advisory]
https://www.openssh.com/security.html [Vendor Advisory]

Authoritative record: CVE-2020-15778 at cve.org

Weaknesses: CWE-78

About this page

This is a reference page, not a dated page of record. It assembles the complete lifecycle of CVE-2020-15778 from the CVE Program record, NVD enrichment, the CISA KEV catalog, EPSS, and OSV advisories. The box score's numbers (CVSS, EPSS, KEV status) are current as of Monday, October 19, 2026 UTC and are re-derived as the archive grows; only dated daily editions are immutable pages of record. The authoritative source for this identifier is cve.org.