CVE-2020-12062 — The scp client in OpenSSH 8

The scp client in OpenSSH 8.2 incorrectly sends duplicate responses to the server upon a utimes system call failure, which allows a malicious unprivileged user on the remote server to overwrite arbitrary files in the client's download directory by creating a crafted subdirec

01What is this vulnerability?

The scp client in OpenSSH 8.2 incorrectly sends duplicate responses to the server upon a utimes system call failure, which allows a malicious unprivileged user on the remote server to overwrite arbitrary files in the client's download directory by creating a crafted subdirectory anywhere on the remote server. The victim must use the command scp -rp to download a file hierarchy containing…

02Affected products

No structured affected-product list available — see references below for vendor advisories.

03Active exploitation status

Not currently listed on the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog. EPSS is the best forward-looking signal — see the EPSS row above.

04Recommended remediation

• Patch to a fixed version listed in the vendor advisory (see references below).
• Mitigate with WAF rules, network egress filters, or feature flags where the patch is not yet available.
• Hunt historical logs for exploitation indicators — see Detection signatures below.

05Technical details

For the full vendor write-up, exploit chains, and reference implementations, see the references list in section 09.

06Detection signatures

Ask SARA in chat to draft a starting detection for this CVE in your stack of choice.

07Related CVEs

No directly-cited follow-up CVEs in the KB record for this advisory. The references list in section 09 carries the vendor cross-references.

08Timeline

• Published: 2020-06-01T16:15:14.260
• Last modified: 2026-10-14T10:17:25.737

09References

• github.com — https://github.com/openssh/openssh-portable/commit/955854cafca88e0cdcd3d09ca1ad4…
• github.com — https://github.com/openssh/openssh-portable/commit/aad87b88fc2536b1ea023213729aa…
• www.openssh.com — https://www.openssh.com/txt/release-8.3
• www.openwall.com — https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2020/05/27/1
• github.com — https://github.com/openssh/openssh-portable/commit/955854cafca88e0cdcd3d09ca1ad4…
• github.com — https://github.com/openssh/openssh-portable/commit/aad87b88fc2536b1ea023213729aa…
• www.openssh.com — https://www.openssh.com/txt/release-8.3
• www.openwall.com — https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2020/05/27/1
• cert-portal.siemens.com — https://cert-portal.siemens.com/productcert/html/ssa-398330.html