CVE-2020-37020

HIGH

SonarQube 8.3.1 - Privilege Escalation

Title source: llm
STIX 2.1

Exploitation Summary

EIP tracks 1 public exploit for CVE-2020-37020. PoCs published by Velayutham Selvaraj.

AI-analyzed exploit summary This exploit leverages an unquoted service path vulnerability in SonarQube 8.3.1 on Windows, allowing local privilege escalation to SYSTEM by placing a malicious executable in a path interpreted by the service.

Description

SonarQube 8.3.1 contains an unquoted service path vulnerability that allows local attackers to gain SYSTEM privileges by exploiting the service executable path. Attackers can replace the wrapper.exe in the service path with a malicious executable to execute code with highest system privileges during service restart.

Exploits (1)

exploitdb WORKING POC
by Velayutham Selvaraj · textlocalwindows
https://www.exploit-db.com/exploits/48677

This exploit leverages an unquoted service path vulnerability in SonarQube 8.3.1 on Windows, allowing local privilege escalation to SYSTEM by placing a malicious executable in a path interpreted by the service.

Classification
Working Poc 90%
Attack Type
Lpe
Complexity
Trivial
Reliability
Reliable
Target: SonarQube 8.3.1.34397
Auth required
Prerequisites: Local access to the system · Write permissions in the service's executable path · SonarQube service running with SYSTEM privileges
devstral-2 · analyzed Feb 16, 2026 Full analysis →

References (3)

Core 3
Core References
Exploit, Third Party Advisory exploit
https://www.exploit-db.com/exploits/48677
Various Sources product
https://www.sonarqube.org

Scores

CVSS v3 7.8
EPSS 0.0012
EPSS Percentile 2.2%
Attack Vector LOCAL
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

CISA SSVC

Vulnrichment
Exploitation poc
Automatable no
Technical Impact total

Details

CWE
CWE-428
Status published
Published Jan 29, 2026
Tracked Since Feb 18, 2026