Exploited. On CISA's list since 2021-11-03, and used by ransomware.
Sophos SFOS SQL Injection Vulnerability
CVE-2020-12271 · Sophos SFOS · Published 2020-04-27
How bad would it be?
9.8 out of 10
CVSS rates it critical: about as damaging as flaws get.
How likely is it to be used?
42%
Estimated chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 98% of all scored flaws (EPSS, 2026-10-29).
Is it already being used?
Yes
CISA has seen it exploited in real attacks. For US government agencies the fix is deadline passed 1641 days ago (2022-05-03).
What CISA says to do
Apply updates per vendor instructions.
Sophos Firewall operating system (SFOS) firmware contains a SQL injection vulnerability when configured with either the administration (HTTPS) service or the User Portal is exposed on the WAN zone. Successful exploitation may cause remote code execution to exfiltrate usernames and hashed passwords for the local device admin(s), portal admins, and user accounts used for remote access (but not external Active Directory or LDAP passwords).
A SQL injection issue was found in SFOS 17.0, 17.1, 17.5, and 18.0 before 2020-04-25 on Sophos XG Firewall devices, as exploited in the wild in April 2020. This affected devices configured with either the administration (HTTPS) service or the User Portal exposed on the WAN zone. A successful attack may have caused remote code execution that exfiltrated usernames and hashed passwords for the local device admin(s), portal admins, and user accounts used for remote access (but not external Active Directory or LDAP passwords)
Understand the kind of weakness behind this flaw. These resources teach the weakness, rather than reproduce this specific CVE. Follow the vendor's advice above to fix the affected product.
SQL injection
Input changes a database command instead of being handled as data.
CWE is a catalogue of weakness types. Labels come from the sources shown and can differ or change. Resource matches reviewed 16 October 2026.
On SentryFeed
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Exploited flaws from CISA's KEV catalogue. Chance of exploitation from EPSS by FIRST. Descriptions and scores from the NVD. This product uses the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD.