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Fencer Vulns
medium 6.3

CVE-2021-22538 json

Privilege escalation in RBAC system

published 2021-03-31 5 y ago modified 2026-07-08 4 mo ago also GHSA-5v95-v8c8-3rh6 , GO-2022-0798 , EUVD-2021-0963

cvss
6.3
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.7%
EPSS 0.7% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 54%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

A privilege escalation vulnerability impacting the Google Exposure Notification Verification Server (versions prior to 0.23.1), allows an attacker who (1) has UserWrite permissions and (2) is using a carefully crafted request or malicious proxy, to create another user with higher privileges than their own. This occurs due to insufficient checks on the allowed set of permissions. The new user creation event would be captured in the Event Log.

Patch / fix

  • go github.com/google/exposure-notifications-verification-server 0.23.1
  • google exposure_notifications_verification_server 0.23.1

Exploit prediction

0.72% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 54% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 6.3 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:L
NVD 3.1 8.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD 2.0 6.5 AV:N/AC:L/Au:S/C:P/I:P/A:P
GitHub 3.1 8.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
go github.com/google/exposure-notifications-verification-server
<0.23.1
0.23.1

Affected products

  • Google LLC Exposure Notifications Verification Server

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-20 Improper Input Validation
  • CWE-276 Incorrect Default Permissions

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.