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Fencer Intel
medium 4.3

CVE-2020-17489 json

An issue was discovered in certain configurations of GNOME gnome-shell through 3.36.4.

published 6y ago modified 4mo ago also EUVD-2020-9439

cvss
4.3
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.6%
EPSS 0.6% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 46%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

An issue was discovered in certain configurations of GNOME gnome-shell through 3.36.4. When logging out of an account, the password box from the login dialog reappears with the password still visible. If the user had decided to have the password shown in cleartext at login time, it is then visible for a brief moment upon a logout. (If the password were never shown in cleartext, only the password length is revealed.)

Patch / fix

  • gnome-shell Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 3.36.5-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2020-17489

  • gnome-shell Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 3.36.4-1ubuntu1~20.04.2

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2020-17489

Ubuntu security data © Canonical Ltd., from https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

  • gnome-shell RHEL 8 3.32.2-44.el8

red hat advisories RHSA-2022:1814

  • gnome-shell SLE Workstation Extension 15 SP2, SLE Module for Desktop Applications 15 SP2 3.34.5-3.13.1
  • gnome-settings-daemon SLE Module for Desktop Applications 15 SP2 3.34.2+0-4.3.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2020:3132-1

  • gnome-shell openSUSE Tumbleweed 40.5-1.1
  • gnome-shell openSUSE Leap 15.2 3.34.5-lp152.2.9.1
  • gnome-settings-daemon openSUSE Leap 15.2 3.34.2+0-lp152.3.3.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2024:10797-1openSUSE-SU-2020:1861-1

  • gnome-shell AlmaLinux 8 3.32.2-44.el8

almalinux advisories ALSA-2022:1814

  • gnome-shell Rocky Linux 8 3.32.2-44.el8

rocky linux advisories RLSA-2022:1814

  • gnome-shell Alpine 3.12 3.36.5-r0

alpine advisories ALPINE-CVE-2020-17489

Alpine secdb © Alpine Linux, from https://secdb.alpinelinux.org via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

Is CVE-2020-17489 in your stack? Fencer shows which of your repositories are affected as soon as an advisory lands, and opens the fix as a pull request.

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Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2020-17489 updated cvss 4.3

gnome-shell: Password from logged-out user may be shown on login screen

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux AppStream (v. 8) gnome-shell 3.32.2-44.el8
    fixed: vendor fix “Do not use the "view password" context menu option when logging into gnome-shell.” RHSA-2022:1814
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 gnome-shell, gnome-shell-browser-plugin
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

Exploit prediction

0.55% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 46% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

Exploits and checks

  • gitlab.gnome.org https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell/-/issues/2997 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.1 4.3 CVSS:3.1/AV:P/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
NVD 2.0 1.9 AV:L/AC:M/Au:N/C:P/I:N/A:N

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-522 Insufficiently Protected Credentials

References

Sources

Fencer Intel keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.