CVE-2010-20103

Proftpd vulnerability

CVSS

9.8

EPSS

5.1%

EPSS pct

91th

Exploited

No known

A malicious backdoor was embedded in the official ProFTPD 1.3.3c source tarball distributed between November 28 and December 2, 2010. The backdoor implements a hidden FTP command trigger that, when invoked, causes the server to execute arbitrary shell commands with root privileges. This allows remote, unauthenticated attackers to run any OS command on the FTP server host.

Affected vendor

Proftpd

Affected product

Proftpd

CVSS vector

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Weakness type (CWE)

CWE-912 — Hidden Functionality

Published

2025-08-20

Risk analysis

Based on its CVSS vector, this vulnerability is exploitable over the network, low attack complexity, requiring no privileges, no user interaction. Successful exploitation leads to high impact to confidentiality, high impact to integrity, high impact to availability.

Its EPSS score of 5.1% reflects a lower probability of exploitation activity in the wild over the next 30 days, placing it above 91% of all scored CVEs.

Check your external exposure to CVE-2010-20103

Confirm whether Proftpd Proftpd is running on any internet-facing host or subdomain.
Match discovered service fingerprints against the version affected by CVE-2010-20103.
Prioritise remediation if the asset is public, business-critical, or near authentication/payment flows.

How ThreatPort helps with CVE-2010-20103

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