CVE-2020-15590

HIGH

Private Internet Access VPN Client 1.5-2.3 - Unauthenticated VPN Kill Switch Bypass via IPv4 Forwarding

Title source: llm
STIX 2.1

Exploitation Summary

EIP tracks 1 public exploit for CVE-2020-15590. PoCs published by sickcodes.

Description

A vulnerability in the Private Internet Access (PIA) VPN Client for Linux 1.5 through 2.3+ allows remote attackers to bypass an intended VPN kill switch mechanism and read sensitive information via intercepting network traffic. Since 1.5, PIA has supported a “split tunnel” OpenVPN bypass option. The PIA killswitch & associated iptables firewall is designed to protect you while using the Internet. When the kill switch is configured to block all inbound and outbound network traffic, privileged applications can continue sending & receiving network traffic if net.ipv4.ip_forward has been enabled in the system kernel parameters. For example, a Docker container running on a host with the VPN turned off, and the kill switch turned on, can continue using the internet, leaking the host IP (CWE 200). In PIA 2.4.0+, policy-based routing is enabled by default and is used to direct all forwarded packets to the VPN interface automatically.

References (3)

Core 3
Core References
Not Applicable x_refsource_misc
https://github.com/sickcodes
Exploit, Mitigation, Third Party Advisory x_refsource_misc
https://sick.codes/cve-2020-15590/
Exploit, Mitigation, Third Party Advisory x_refsource_misc
https://github.com/sickcodes/security/blob/master/advisories/SICK-2020-001.md

Scores

CVSS v3 7.5
EPSS 0.0251
EPSS Percentile 82.7%
Attack Vector NETWORK
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N

Details

CWE
CWE-863
Status published
Products (1)
privateinternetaccess/private_internet_access_vpn_client 1.5.0 - 2.4.0
Published Sep 14, 2020
Tracked Since Feb 18, 2026