CVE-2020-6207 — SAP Solution Manager Missing Authentication for Critical Function Vulnerability

CVE-2020-6207

SAP Solution Manager — Unauthenticated EEM Servlet Access Leads to Landscape-Wide SMD Agent Compromise

What is SAP Solution Manager?

SAP Solution Manager (SolMan) is the centralized administration hub for an organization's entire SAP landscape — it monitors, configures, and pushes changes to every connected SAP system through a network of "SMD Agents" deployed on each managed host. Because SolMan has trusted management access into every system it oversees, compromising it is one of the most efficient ways to pivot into an organization's full SAP estate at once, rather than attacking each system individually.

Overview

CVE-2020-6207 is a missing-authentication vulnerability (CWE-306) in SolMan's End-User Experience Monitoring (EEM) component. A servlet used to distribute monitoring scripts to SMD Agents across the landscape does not enforce an authentication check, allowing an unauthenticated network attacker to submit and execute arbitrary scripts on every SMD Agent SolMan manages — effectively a single unauthenticated request that compromises an entire SAP landscape's worth of connected systems (CVSS 3.1: AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H, 9.8 Critical).

Affected Versions

Product Fixed via
SAP Solution Manager 7.2 SAP Security Patch Day, March 2020 (apply latest support package)

Technical Details

SolMan's EEM functionality is designed to push diagnostic and monitoring scripts out to SMD Agents installed on managed systems throughout the landscape. The servlet handling this distribution fails to verify that the requester is an authenticated SolMan administrator before accepting and forwarding a script for execution. Because SMD Agents implicitly trust instructions coming from their managing Solution Manager, an attacker who reaches the vulnerable servlet can push malicious code to every agent in the environment in one action — turning a single missing authentication check into landscape-wide remote code execution.

Discovery

CISA and industry researchers, including SAP-focused security firms such as Onapsis, have documented this vulnerability class as part of a broader pattern of scanning and exploitation attempts against internet-facing SAP infrastructure that intensified through 2020–2021.

Exploitation Context

CISA and the FBI issued public warnings about active scanning and exploitation attempts against unpatched SAP applications, including Solution Manager, as attackers sought footholds into high-value enterprise resource planning environments. CISA added this CVE to KEV in November 2021 based on confirmed exploitation.

Remediation

  1. Apply SAP's March 2020 Security Patch Day fix for Solution Manager 7.2 immediately if not already done — this vulnerability has had a patch available for years and remaining unpatched is a high-confidence indicator of compromise risk.
  2. Restrict network access to SolMan's EEM servlet to only the SMD Agents and administrators that need it; it should never be directly reachable from the internet.
  3. Audit SMD Agent logs across the landscape for unexpected scripts pushed from SolMan, especially any that don't correspond to known administrator activity.
  4. Treat SolMan as Tier-0 infrastructure in your SAP security program — equivalent to a domain controller in a Windows environment — given its trusted reach into every system it manages.

Key Details

PropertyValue
CVE ID CVE-2020-6207
Vendor / Product SAP — Solution Manager
NVD Published2020-03-10
NVD Last Modified2025-10-31
CVSS 3.1 Score9.8
CVSS 3.1 VectorCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
SeverityCRITICAL
CWE CWE-306 find similar ↗
CISA KEV Added2021-11-03
CISA KEV Deadline2022-05-03
Known Ransomware Use No

CVSS 3.1 Breakdown

Attack Vector
Network
Attack Complexity
Low
Privileges Required
None
User Interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
High
Availability
High

Required Action

CISA BOD 22-01 Deadline: 2022-05-03. Apply updates per vendor instructions.

Timeline

DateEvent
2020-03-10SAP publishes fix as part of its March 2020 Security Patch Day
2021-11-03Added to CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog
2022-05-03CISA BOD 22-01 remediation deadline

References

ResourceType
NVD — CVE-2020-6207 Vulnerability Database
CISA KEV Catalog Entry US Government