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Medium

Security advisory

Type: advisorySources: OSVCVE: CVE-2020-26273

osquery is a SQL powered operating system instrumentation, monitoring, and analytics framework. In osquery before version 4.6.0, by using sqlite's ATTACH verb, someone with administrative access to osquery can cause reads and writes to arbitrary sqlite databases on disk. This _does_ allow arbitrary files to be created, but they will be sqlite databases. It does not appear to allow existing non-sqlite files to be overwritten. This has been patched in osquery 4.6.0. There are several mitigating factors and possible workarounds. In some deployments, the people with access to these interfaces may be considered administrators. In some deployments, configuration is managed by a central tool. This tool can filter for the `ATTACH` keyword. osquery can be run as non-root user. Because this also limits the desired access levels, this requires deployment specific testing and configuration.

Products
Not specified
Affected versions
Not specified
Fixed versions
Not specified
CVEs
CVE-2020-26273
Confirmed fixed CVEs
Not specified
Updated in this feed
31 Oct 2026, 12:37 UTC · Revision 1

Source evidence

CVE-2020-26273

core-osv · Original source

Published 16 Dec 2020, 02:15 UTC

osquery is a SQL powered operating system instrumentation, monitoring, and analytics framework. In osquery before version 4.6.0, by using sqlite's ATTACH verb, someone with administrative access to osquery can cause reads and writes to arbitrary sqlite databases on disk. This _does_ allow arbitrary files to be created, but they will be sqlite databases. It does not appear to allow existing non-sqlite files to be overwritten. This has been patched in osquery 4.6.0. There are several mitigating factors and possible workarounds. In some deployments, the people with access to these interfaces may be considered administrators. In some deployments, configuration is managed by a central tool. This tool can filter for the `ATTACH` keyword. osquery can be run as non-root user. Because this also limits the desired access levels, this requires deployment specific testing and configuration.

osv:CVE-2020-26273
Complete source record
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  "url": "https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2020-26273",
  "method": "structured",
  "payload": {
    "kind": "advisory",
    "title": "CVE-2020-26273",
    "summary": "osquery is a SQL powered operating system instrumentation, monitoring, and analytics framework. In osquery before version 4.6.0, by using sqlite's ATTACH verb, someone with administrative access to osquery can cause reads and writes to arbitrary sqlite databases on disk. This _does_ allow arbitrary files to be created, but they will be sqlite databases. It does not appear to allow existing non-sqlite files to be overwritten. This has been patched in osquery 4.6.0. There are several mitigating factors and possible workarounds. In some deployments, the people with access to these interfaces may be considered administrators. In some deployments, configuration is managed by a central tool. This tool can filter for the `ATTACH` keyword. osquery can be run as non-root user. Because this also limits the desired access levels, this requires deployment specific testing and configuration.",
    "evidence": "osv:CVE-2020-26273",
    "products": [],
    "severity": "medium",
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      "modified": "2026-10-20T14:05:16.332751202Z",
      "provider": "osv",
      "references": [
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    "related_cves": [
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        "value": "CVE-2020-26273",
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  "source_id": "core-osv",
  "document_id": 388546,
  "published_at": "2020-12-16T02:15:13.037+00:00"
}