Adobe Photoshop Elements Privilege Escalation Vulnerability - symbolic link

published 2021-06-28 5 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2021-15266

cvss: 6.2; version 3.0, CNA
cisa kev: Not listed; not in CISA's catalog
epss: 0.5%; EPSS 0.5% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 41%
public exploits: 0; none known

Adobe Photoshop Elements version 5.2 (and earlier) is affected by an insecure temporary file creation vulnerability. An unauthenticated attacker could leverage this vulnerability to call functions against the installer to perform high privileged actions. Exploitation of this issue does not require user interaction.

Patch / fix

fixed in 1

adobe photoshop_elements 5.3

CISA SSVC

Exploitation: none
Automatable: no
Technical impact: partial
Assessed: 18 mo ago (2025-04-23)

Exploit prediction

0.48% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 41% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by	version	score	vector
CNA	3.0	6.2	CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N
NVD	3.1	5.5	CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N
NVD	2.0	2.1	AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:P/A:N

Affected products

Adobe Photoshop Elements

Classification

Weakness

CWE-379 Creation of Temporary File in Directory with Insecure Permissions
CWE-668 Exposure of Resource to Wrong Sphere

References

helpx.adobe.com /security/products/photoshop_elements/apsb21-46.html
vendor-advisory

Sources

CVE List CVE-2021-28597
NVD CVE-2021-28597

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.

Summary