Cyber Resilience

CVE-2021-31854

High

Published: 19 January 2022

Published
19 January 2022
Modified
24 February 2026
KEV Added
Patch
CVSS Score v3.1 7.7 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/UI:R/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
EPSS Score 0.0032 55.9th percentile
Risk Priority 16 60% EPSS · 20% KEV · 20% CVSS

Summary

CVE-2021-31854 is a high-severity OS Command Injection (CWE-78) vulnerability in Mcafee Agent. Its CVSS base score is 7.7 (High).

Operationally, ranked in the top 44.1% of CVEs by exploit likelihood; it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

EU & UK References

Vulnerability details

A command Injection Vulnerability in McAfee Agent (MA) for Windows prior to 5.7.5 allows local users to inject arbitrary shell code into the file cleanup.exe. The malicious clean.exe file is placed into the relevant folder and executed by running the…

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McAfee Agent deployment feature located in the System Tree. An attacker may exploit the vulnerability to obtain a reverse shell which can lead to privilege escalation to obtain root privileges.

CWE(s)

Related Threats

No named actor attribution yet. ATT&CK technique mapping in progress for this CVE.

Affected Assets

mcafee
agent
≤ 5.7.5

Mitigating Controls

Likely Mitigating Controls AI

Per-CVE control mapping for this CVE has not run yet; the list below is derived from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry.

addresses: CWE-78

Platform-independent apps typically execute inside a managed runtime or sandbox that restricts direct OS command execution, reducing the ability to exploit OS command injection.

addresses: CWE-78

Validates inputs to block special elements that would alter OS command execution.

References