Cyber Resilience

CVE-2021-37938

Medium

Published: 18 November 2021

Published
18 November 2021
Modified
21 November 2024
KEV Added
Patch
CVSS Score v3.1 4.3 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:N
EPSS Score 0.0017 37.8th percentile
Risk Priority 9 60% EPSS · 20% KEV · 20% CVSS

Summary

CVE-2021-37938 is a medium-severity Improper Privilege Management (CWE-269) vulnerability in Elastic Kibana. Its CVSS base score is 4.3 (Medium).

Operationally, ranked at the 37.8th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

EU & UK References

Vulnerability details

It was discovered that on Windows operating systems specifically, Kibana was not validating a user supplied path, which would load .pbf files. Because of this, a malicious user could arbitrarily traverse the Kibana host to load internal files ending in…

more

the .pbf extension. Thanks to Dominic Couture for finding this vulnerability.

CWE(s)

Related Threats

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

Affected Assets

elastic
kibana
7.9.0 — 7.15.2

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-269

Policy addresses roles, responsibilities, and privilege management to prevent improper privilege assignments.

addresses: CWE-269

Access supervision ensures privileges are assigned and managed without improper escalation or retention.

addresses: CWE-269

Assigning group/role memberships and access authorizations (privileges) while reviewing accounts addresses improper privilege management.

addresses: CWE-269

Enforces proper privilege management by requiring all decisions through the verified reference monitor.

addresses: CWE-269

By mandating division of duties across roles, the control enforces proper privilege management and prevents a single entity from controlling an entire sensitive process.

addresses: CWE-269

Implements core proper privilege management by restricting to only required rights.

addresses: CWE-269

Policy requires training on privilege management and least privilege, making it harder to exploit improper privilege management weaknesses.

addresses: CWE-269

Training covers proper privilege management practices, making incorrect privilege assignments less likely.

References