CVE-2021-44529
Published: 08 December 2021
Summary
CVE-2021-44529 is a critical-severity Code Injection (CWE-94) vulnerability in Ivanti Endpoint Manager Cloud Services Appliance. Its CVSS base score is 9.8 (Critical).
Operationally, ranked in the top 0.0% of CVEs by exploit likelihood; CISA has added it to the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog; a public proof-of-concept is referenced.
The strongest mitigations our analysis identified are NIST 800-53 AC-3 (Access Enforcement) and SI-10 (Information Input Validation).
Deeper analysis
A code injection vulnerability tracked as CVE-2021-44529 affects the Ivanti EPM Cloud Services Appliance (CSA). The flaw, classified under CWE-94, permits an unauthenticated remote attacker to inject and execute arbitrary code that runs with the limited privileges of the "nobody" account.
Because the attack requires no credentials and can be performed over the network with low complexity, an adversary can achieve remote code execution that may lead to confidentiality, integrity, and availability impacts on the appliance.
Public references include the Ivanti security advisory SA-2021-12-02, which addresses patches and mitigation steps, along with multiple exploit artifacts published on PacketStorm Security for CSA versions 4.5 and 4.6.
The issue received a CVSS v3.1 base score of 9.8, reflecting its critical severity and ease of remote exploitation.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2021-31360
Vulnerability details
A code injection vulnerability in the Ivanti EPM Cloud Services Appliance (CSA) allows an unauthenticated user to execute arbitrary code with limited permissions (nobody).
- CWE(s)
- KEV Date Added
- 25 March 2024
Related Threats
No named actor attribution yet. ATT&CK technique mapping in progress for this CVE.
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI
Directly requires validation of all inputs to block the arbitrary code supplied in the injection attack.
Enforces that only authenticated and authorized subjects may invoke code-execution paths on the CSA appliance.
Limits the set of actions permitted without identification or authentication, reducing the attack surface exploited by the unauthenticated RCE.