CVE-2020-37204
Published: 11 February 2026
Summary
CVE-2020-37204 is a medium-severity Classic Buffer Overflow (CWE-120) vulnerability in Nsasoft Remshutdown. Its CVSS base score is 4.6 (Medium).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Application or System Exploitation (T1499.004); ranked at the 4.4th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog; a public proof-of-concept is referenced.
The strongest mitigations our analysis identified are NIST 800-53 SC-5 (Denial-of-service Protection) and SI-10 (Information Input Validation).
Deeper analysis
CVE-2020-37204 is a denial of service vulnerability in RemShutdown 2.9.0.0, specifically affecting the registration key input field. The flaw allows attackers to crash the application by pasting a 1000-character buffer payload into this field. It stems from CWE-120 (Buffer Copy without Checking Size of Input ('Classic Buffer Overflow')) and carries a CVSS v3.1 base score of 7.5 (AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H).
Attackers require no privileges or user interaction and can exploit the issue over the network with low complexity. Successful exploitation crashes the RemShutdown application, resulting in a high-impact denial of service on availability.
Advisories and related resources include the vendor site at http://www.nsauditor.com/, a proof-of-concept exploit at https://www.exploit-db.com/exploits/47863, and a VulnCheck advisory at https://www.vulncheck.com/advisories/remshutdown-key-denial-of-service, which may provide further details on mitigations.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2020-31184
Vulnerability details
RemShutdown 2.9.0.0 contains a denial of service vulnerability in its registration key input that allows attackers to crash the application. Attackers can generate a 1000-character buffer payload and paste it into the registration key field to trigger an application crash.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI
Why these techniques?
Buffer overflow in registration key field directly enables application crash via exploitation, mapping to T1499.004 Endpoint Denial of Service (Application or System Exploitation).
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI
Directly validates registration key inputs to prevent buffer overflows from oversized payloads like the 1000-character string causing the crash.
Restricts the length and characteristics of inputs to the registration key field, blocking excessive payloads that trigger the buffer overflow DoS.
Implements denial-of-service protections specifically against network-accessible crashes from malformed inputs in the registration key field.