Vulnerability report

Exploited in the wild Confirmed confidence In CISA KEV

CVE-2020-12271

XG Firewall SQL Injection

Sophos / XG Firewall

Watch CVE-2020-12271 Browse KEV feed
Severity
CVSS 10.0 · Critical
Confidence
Confirmed
Exploit status
Exploited in the wild
EPSS
42.4%
First observed
—
Last observed
—

Decision summary

What security teams need to know first

Direct answers before the deeper technical record.

What it is

CVE-2020-12271 is an unauthenticated vulnerability affecting Sophos XG Firewall. A SQL injection issue was found in SFOS 17.0, 17.1, 17.5, and 18.0 before 2020-04-25 on Sophos XG Firewall devices, as exploited in the...

Is it exploited?

Yes. Previdian tracks this CVE as a known exploited vulnerability. Confidence is confirmed. Listed in CISA KEV.

Who is affected?

Sophos / XG Firewall.

What should we do?

Prioritize remediation. Validate affected assets and apply vendor fixes on an accelerated timeline.

Overview

XG Firewall SQL Injection

A SQL injection issue was found in SFOS 17.0, 17.1, 17.5, and 18.0 before 2020-04-25 on Sophos XG Firewall devices, as exploited in the wild in April 2020. This affected devices configured with either the administration (HTTPS) service or the User Portal exposed on the WAN zone.

A successful attack may have caused remote code execution that exfiltrated usernames and hashed passwords for the local device admin(s), portal admins, and user accounts used for remote access (but not external Active Directory or LDAP passwords)

Published
27 Apr 2020
Exploitation Reported
03 Nov 2021
Attack vector
Remote
Complexity
Low
Privileges
None
User interaction
None

Tags

cisa ransomware malware

CVE References

Exploitation evidence

Why Previdian marks this CVE as exploited

Third-party attestation and first-party sensor observation are shown separately so teams can judge the evidence chain.

Exploited in the wild

CISA

Recorded 03 Nov 2021

A trusted third party reported exploitation.

Used in malware

CISA

Recorded 03 Nov 2021

Malware families have been linked to exploitation of this CVE.

Known exploited vulnerability sources

Per-source evidence links for KEV attestations are available through the Previdian Pro API.

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Source Added
CISA First 2021-11-03 00:00 UTC

Detection

Operational artifacts and observed signals

Make the evidence actionable in scanner, SOC, and edge-control workflows.

Observed signals

Request targets
User-Agents
Callback hosts
0
0
0

Request targets and User-Agents available in Pro. Callback host details available in Enterprise.

Scanner coverage

No scanner integrations recorded yet.

Virtual patch status

No Previdian virtual patch is currently available. Future rules ship for ModSecurity, Cloudflare, and AWS WAF.

Learn about virtual patches →

No detection artifacts or sensor request patterns are available for this CVE yet.

Check back as sensor telemetry and scanner integrations are updated.

Risk and context

Severity, weaknesses, and research context

CVSS v3.0

10.0 Critical

Potential damage if exploited. Separate from whether attackers are using it.

CVSS:3.0/AC:L/AV:N/A:H/C:H/I:H/PR:N/S:C/UI:N

EPSS

42.4%

Estimated chance of exploitation in the next 30 days. Previdian's warning comes from evidence, not this score.

Weaknesses

Improper Neutralization of Special Elements used in an SQL Command ('SQL Injection') CWE-89

Timeline

From disclosure to observed exploitation

  1. 00:00 UTC

    Added to CISA KEV

    Listed in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog

  2. 00:00 UTC

    First public exploitation report

    Exploit observed in malware

  3. 04:00 UTC

    CVE published

    Vulnerability disclosed publicly

  4. 00:00 UTC

    CVE ID reserved

    Identifier reserved by the CNA

Pro API

Automate this intelligence

Confidence, exploit status, sensor telemetry, PoCs, scanner integrations, mentions, and tags are available programmatically for VM, SOC, and CTI workflows.

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  • Evidence confidence and provenance
  • First-party sensor telemetry
  • PoC and scanner references
  • Affected versions and enrichment
  • Automation-ready JSON delivery

GET /api/v2/pro/kevs/CVE-2020-12271

Sample API response 
{
  "cve_id": "CVE-2020-12271",
  "confidence": "Confirmed",
  "cvss_score": 10.0,
  "cvss_estimated": false,
  "epss_score": 0.42434,
  "exploit_status": {
    "exploited_in_the_wild": true,
    "active_exploitation_observed": false
  },
  "sensor_telemetry": { "attempts": 0, "sensors": 0 }
}