GHSA-5r3f-3m3j-wcj2 CVE-2022-22936 PYSEC-2022-173

SaltStack Salt Authentication Bypass by Capture-replay

High PyPI

Severity: 8.8 / 10; High · CVSS 3.1
Exploit chance (EPSS): 0.83%; Chance of exploitation in the next 30 days. Higher than 57.50% of scored vulnerabilities.
Known exploited: No; Not in CISA's catalog
Weakness: CWE-294 Authentication Bypass by Capture-replay
Fix: 3002.8; Upgrade salt to this version or later

Description

An issue was discovered in SaltStack Salt in versions before 3002.8, 3003.4, 3004.1. Job publishes and file server replies are susceptible to replay attacks, which can result in an attacker replaying job publishes causing minions to run old jobs. File server replies can also be re-played. A sufficient craft attacker could gain root access on minion under certain scenarios.

Affected versions

PyPI

Package	Vulnerable	Fixed in
salt	`< 3002.8`	`3002.8`
salt	`>= 3003, < 3003.4`	`3003.4`
salt	`>= 3004, < 3004.1`	`3004.1`

How to fix

Move to the fixed version or later with your package manager, update the lockfile, and run your tests. If the package only arrives through another dependency, upgrade that dependency first. If none of its releases pulls a fixed version yet, force the version with your package manager's override.

salt PyPI → `3002.8`

pip

pip install --upgrade "salt>=3002.8"

poetry

poetry add "salt>=3002.8"

uv

uv add "salt>=3002.8"

Severity breakdown

CVSS 3.1 8.8

CVSS:3.1/AV:A/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Attack vector: Adjacent
Attack complexity: Low
Privileges required: None
User interaction: None
Scope: Unchanged
Confidentiality: High
Integrity: High
Availability: High

Weakness

CWE-294: Authentication Bypass by Capture-replay

A capture-replay flaw exists when the design of the product makes it possible for a malicious user to sniff network traffic and bypass authentication by replaying it to the server in question to the same effect as the original message (or with minor changes).

How to prevent it

Architecture and Design: Utilize some sequence or time stamping functionality along with a checksum which takes this into account in order to ensure that messages can be parsed only once.
Architecture and Design: Since any attacker who can listen to traffic can see sequence numbers, it is necessary to sign messages with some kind of cryptography to ensure that sequence numbers are not simply doctored along with content.

References

Advisories

Packages

github.com/saltstack/salt

Timeline

Mar 29, 2022 Published
Jun 10, 2026 Last updated by the source
Oct 31, 2026 Latest EPSS score

Advisory	Severity	Why it's related
CVE-2020-16846 SaltStack Salt Command Injection in netapi ssh client	Critical Known exploited	Also affects salt
CVE-2020-11652 SaltStack Salt is vulnerable Arbitrary Directory Access	High Known exploited	Also affects salt
CVE-2020-11651 SaltStack Salt Unauthenticated Remote Code Execution	Critical Known exploited	Also affects salt
GHSA-vcf3-26xf-fw4m Salt Authentication Protocol Version Downgrade Allows Minion Impersonation	Medium	Also affects salt
GHSA-77w2-v593-vxvv Salt junos Module Vulnerable to Code Injection via Specially Crafted YAML Payload	High	Also affects salt
GHSA-8pcp-r83j-fc92 Salt vulnerable to directory traversal attack in file receiving method	High	Also affects salt
GHSA-989c-m532-p2hv Salt's worker process vulnerable to denial of service through file read operation	Medium	Also affects salt
GHSA-7f3f-x5f5-79gw Salt's file contents overwrite the VirtKey class	Medium	Also affects salt

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