Patchfirst
CVE-2021-20035 KEV Medium · 6.5 EPSS 4.4%

SonicWall SMA100 Appliances OS Command Injection Vulnerability

SonicWall · SMA100 Appliances

Summary

The SonicWall SMA100 Appliances contain an OS command injection flaw in the management interface, caused by improper neutralization of special elements in user input. A remote attacker with valid authentication can inject arbitrary commands, running as the 'nobody' user, which could lead to denial of service.

Official description · NVD

Improper neutralization of special elements in the SMA100 management interface allows a remote authenticated attacker to inject arbitrary commands as a 'nobody' user which potentially leads to DoS.

Breakdown
60.8 / 100
Exploited
Yes, in CISA KEV
Reports
0
Tactics
5/15

How an attack unfolds

Based on mappings. Select a step to see the evidence.
  1. How attackers get in

First seen exploited 4 years after disclosure.

  1. Disclosedday 0
  2. First seen exploitedVulnCheck KEV evidence+4 yrs
  3. Added to CISA KEVEU database agrees+4 yrs

CISA KEV listing is when exploitation was confirmed, not necessarily the first attack.

techniques

2 , grouped by in kill-chain order 2

Initial AccessTA0001

Valid Accounts T1078 also Persistence, Privilege Escalation, Stealth
MITRE CTID mapping of the KEV entry · how it is exploited

While this vulnerability was originally considered a denial-of-service issue in 2021, this improper neutralization issue has been exploited in 2025 as a remote code execution vulnerability. After authenticating (either with default credentials or via brute force, password stuffing, or dictionary attacks), an attacker can execute arbitrary commands as a "nobody" user.

ExecutionTA0002

MITRE CTID mapping of the KEV entry · how it is exploited

Detection

0 rules for this CVE · 151 general rules for its techniques

Rules for this CVE

0 that reference CVE-2021-20035 directly.

CVE-specific rules are not available in this build. Search SigmaHQ ↗

Sigma rules © SigmaHQ, Detection Rule License 1.1; linked, not reproduced.

What security researchers reported

Not named in any threat report yet

Also mentioned in 50 community threat pulses (AlienVault OTX)

Weaker evidence

Pulses are indicator collections that anyone can publish. A mention is not confirmation of exploitation.

References

2 links, grouped by NVD tag (1 duplicate merged)
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