CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2020-5860 — F5 Big-Iq Centralized Management security vulnerability

High CVSS 8.1

On BIG-IP 15.0.0-15.1.0.2, 14.1.0-14.1.2.3, 13.1.0-13.1.3.2, 12.1.0-12.1.5.1, and 11.5.2-11.6.5.1 and BIG-IQ 7.0.0, 6.0.0-6.1.0, and 5.2.0-5.4.0, in a High Availability (HA) network failover in Device Service Cluster (DSC), the failover service does not require a strong form of authentication and HA network failover traffic is not encrypted by Transport Layer Security (TLS).

Severity
High
CVSS
8.1 (3.1)
Published
2020-03-27
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
software/application
Weaknesses
CWE-287, CWE-319

Affected products

  • f5 / big-iq_centralized_management
  • f5 / big-iq_centralized_management / 7.0.0
  • f5 / big-ip_access_policy_manager
  • f5 / big-ip_advanced_firewall_manager

Showing 4 representative product identities from 58 source matches. Confirm exact affected versions with the linked vendor and NVD evidence.

Matched remediation archetype

Authentication bypass and missing authentication

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Check exposure

  • Map every affected endpoint and protocol path, including alternate ports, legacy routes, recovery flows, service accounts, and machine-to-machine access.
  • Confirm which deployments enable the affected authentication mode and whether the interface is reachable from untrusted networks.
  • Review session, token, credential, and proxy trust configuration without attempting account takeover.

Remediate safely

  • Apply the supported fix and centralize fail-closed authentication before protected request handling.
  • Remove default or embedded credentials, rotate affected secrets and sessions, and bind authentication decisions to the intended audience and channel.
  • Add negative tests for alternate routes, malformed or absent credentials, recovery flows, and proxy-derived identity.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

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