Skip to content
Fencer Vulns
high 7.5

CVE-2021-21996 json

Exposure of Resource to Wrong Sphere in salt

published 2021-09-08 5 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also GHSA-pf7h-h2wq-m7pg , PYSEC-2021-318 , EUVD-2021-0225

cvss
7.5
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
3.4%
EPSS 3.4% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 88%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

An issue was discovered in SaltStack Salt before 3003.3. A user who has control of the source, and source_hash URLs can gain full file system access as root on a salt minion.

Patch / fix

  • pypi salt 3003.3
  • saltstack salt 3000.3
  • spacecmd Manager Server Module 4.1 4.1.15-4.30.2
  • susemanager Manager Server Module 4.1 4.1.31-3.39.2
  • spacewalk-web Manager Server Module 4.1 4.1.30-3.36.1
  • spacewalk-java Manager Server Module 4.1 4.1.41-3.58.2
  • grafana-formula Manager Server Module 4.1 0.4.2-3.12.2
  • susemanager-sls Manager Server Module 4.1 4.1.31-3.51.2
  • py26-compat-salt Manager Server Module 4.1 2016.11.10-17.2
  • py27-compat-salt Manager Server Module 4.1 3000.3-6.15.2

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2021:3621-1SUSE-SU-2021:3561-1SUSE-SU-2021:3557-1SUSE-SU-2021:3556-1SUSE-SU-2021:3555-1SUSE-SU-2021:14833-1

  • salt openSUSE Leap 15.2 3002.2-lp152.3.45.1
  • salt openSUSE Leap 15.3 3002.2-50.1.15.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2021:1443-1openSUSE-SU-2021:3557-1

  • salt Alpine 3.14 3003.3-r0

alpine advisories ALPINE-CVE-2021-21996

Alpine secdb © Alpine Linux, from https://secdb.alpinelinux.org via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2021-21996 updated cvss 7.5

salt: user having control of source and source_hash URLs leads to root access

  • Red Hat Ceph Storage 2 salt, salt-minion
    affected: no fix planned “Out of support scope”

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

Exploit prediction

3.38% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 88% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.1 7.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD 2.0 7.1 AV:N/AC:H/Au:S/C:C/I:C/A:C
GitHub 3.1 7.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
pypi salt
<3003.3
3003.3

Affected products

  • n/a Saltstack Salt

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-668 Exposure of Resource to Wrong Sphere

References

Sources

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.