Cyber Resilience

CVE-2021-43523

CriticalPublic PoC

Published: 10 November 2021

Published
10 November 2021
Modified
05 May 2025
KEV Added
Patch
CVSS Score v3.1 9.6 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
EPSS Score 0.0289 86.6th percentile
Risk Priority 21 60% EPSS · 20% KEV · 20% CVSS

Summary

CVE-2021-43523 is a critical-severity Cross-site Scripting (CWE-79) vulnerability in Uclibc Uclibc. Its CVSS base score is 9.6 (Critical).

Operationally, ranked in the top 13.4% of CVEs by exploit likelihood; it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog; a public proof-of-concept is referenced.

EU & UK References

Vulnerability details

In uClibc and uClibc-ng before 1.0.39, incorrect handling of special characters in domain names returned by DNS servers via gethostbyname, getaddrinfo, gethostbyaddr, and getnameinfo can lead to output of wrong hostnames (leading to domain hijacking) or injection into applications (leading…

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to remote code execution, XSS, applications crashes, etc.). In other words, a validation step, which is expected in any stub resolver, does not occur.

CWE(s)

Related Threats

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

Affected Assets

uclibc
uclibc
≤ 0.9.33.2
uclibc-ng project
uclibc-ng
≤ 1.0.39

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-79

Penetration testing submits XSS payloads to web applications, detecting cross-site scripting flaws for subsequent remediation.

addresses: CWE-79

Validates web inputs to reject script-related content that could produce XSS.

addresses: CWE-79

Output validation against expected content can reject or sanitize script content in generated web pages, reducing XSS exploitability.

References