CVE-2021-34856
Published: 25 October 2021
Summary
CVE-2021-34856 is a high-severity Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer (CWE-119) vulnerability in Parallels Parallels Desktop. Its CVSS base score is 8.8 (High).
Operationally, ranked at the 34.8th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2021-21503
Vulnerability details
This vulnerability allows local attackers to escalate privileges on affected installations of Parallels Desktop 16.1.3 (49160). An attacker must first obtain the ability to execute high-privileged code on the target guest system in order to exploit this vulnerability. The specific…
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flaw exists within the virtio-gpu virtual device. The issue results from the lack of proper validation of user-supplied data, which can result in a memory corruption condition. An attacker can leverage this vulnerability to escalate privileges and execute arbitrary code in the context of the hypervisor. Was ZDI-CAN-13581.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
No named actor attribution yet. ATT&CK technique mapping in progress for this CVE.
Affected Assets
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.
Memory protections (e.g., W^X, ASLR) make exploitation of buffer-boundary violations far harder to turn into code execution.
Ongoing control assessments and code testing (static/dynamic analysis, fuzzing) surface memory buffer restriction failures, which are then remediated before release.
Managed runtimes used by platform-independent applications (e.g., JVM, CLR) enforce memory safety, preventing most buffer overflows that require direct memory manipulation.
Detects exploitation attempts that produce memory corruption, crashes, or anomalous behavior.