7.8

CVE-2021-37941: elastic apm_agent Improper Privilege Management

CVSS: 7.8v3.1HighModified
AliasesGHSA-r562-m862-63w3PYSEC-2026-634
Published 08-12-2021Last modified 04-08-2024
Open JSON

Vulnerability summary

CVE-2021-37941 is a high (CVSS 7.8) Improper Privilege Management vulnerability in elastic apm_agent. EPSS estimates a 0.21% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 11.1% of scored vulnerabilities.

Overall risk
31/100
0100
Medium · default modelHow is this calculated?
CVSS score
7.8/10
010
High · v3.1 (NVD)
EPSS score
0.21%
0%100%
Low · +0.01 pp in 30 days
KEVNot listedIn no KEV catalog
RansomwareNone recordedNo known use recorded
Public exploits0No public exploits recorded

Timeline

  1. 08-12-2021
    PublishedVulnerability first disclosed.
  2. 04-08-2024
    Last modifiedVulnerability information updated.

Description

A local privilege escalation issue was found with the APM Java agent, where a user on the system could attach a malicious file to an application running with the APM Java agent. Using this vector, a malicious or compromised user account could use the agent to run commands at a higher level of permissions than they possess. This vulnerability affects users that have set up the agent via the attacher cli 3, the attach API 2, as well as users that have enabled the profiling_inferred_spans_enabled option

CVSS metrics

3 scores · 2 sources · 2 versions

EPSS trend

Probability

0.21%

Chance of exploitation in the next 30 days

Percentile

11%

Versus all other CVEs

30-day change

+0.01 pp

From 0.21% on 19-09-2026

19-09-202619-10-2026
EPSS score
0.21%

Known exploited

Compare KEV catalogs

Not in any of the 3 tracked catalogs.

Public exploits

0 found

No public exploits indexed.

Weaknesses

CWE · root cause

Affected systems

Elastic2 products
PyPI1 product
  • elastic-apm≥ 1.10.0, < 1.27.0

2 vendors · 3 products

References

5 links