Junos OS and Junos OS Evolved: Local Privilege Escalation vulnerability

published 2021-10-19 5 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2021-18269

cvss: 7.8; version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev: Not listed; not in CISA's catalog
epss: 0.2%; EPSS 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 15%
public exploits: 0; none known

A local privilege escalation vulnerability in Juniper Networks Junos OS and Junos OS Evolved allows a local, low-privileged user to cause the Juniper DHCP daemon (jdhcpd) process to crash, resulting in a Denial of Service (DoS), or execute arbitrary commands as root. Continued processing of malicious input will repeatedly crash the system and sustain the Denial of Service (DoS) condition. Systems are only vulnerable if jdhcpd is running, which can be confirmed via the 'show system processes' command. For example: root@host# run show system processes extensive | match dhcp 26537 root -16 0 97568K 13692K RUN 0 0:01 3.71% jdhcpd This issue affects: Juniper Networks Junos OS: All versions, including the following supported releases: 15.1 versions prior to 15.1R7-S10; 17.4 versions prior to 17.4R3-S5; 18.3 versions prior to 18.3R3-S5; 18.4 versions prior to 18.4R3-S9; 19.1 versions prior to 19.1R3-S6; 19.2 versions prior to 19.2R1-S7, 19.2R3-S3; 19.3 versions prior to 19.3R2-S6, 19.3R3-S3; 19.4 versions prior to 19.4R3-S6; 20.1 versions prior to 20.1R2-S2, 20.1R3-S1; 20.2 versions prior to 20.2R3-S2; 20.3 versions prior to 20.3R3; 20.4 versions prior to 20.4R2-S1, 20.4R3; 21.1 versions prior to 21.1R1-S1, 21.1R2. Juniper Networks Junos OS Evolved: All versions prior to 20.4R2-S3-EVO; All versions of 21.1-EVO.

Patch / fix

fixed in 2

Juniper Networks Junos OS 15.1R7-S10, 17.4R3-S5, 18.3R3-S5, 18.4R3-S9, 19.1R3-S6, 19.2R1-S7, 19.2R3-S3, 19.3R2-S6, 19.3R3-S3, 19.4R3-S6, 20.1R2-S2, 20.1R3-S1, 20.2R3-S2, 20.3R3, 20.4R2-S1, 20.4R3, 21.1R1-S1, 21.1R2
Juniper Networks Junos OS Evolved 20.4R2-S3-EVO

Exploit prediction

0.24% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 15% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by	version	score	vector
CNA	3.1	7.8	CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD	2.0	7.2	AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C

Affected products

Juniper Networks Junos OS
Juniper Networks Junos OS Evolved

Classification

Weakness

CWE-269 Improper Privilege Management
CWE-121 Stack-based Buffer Overflow

References

kb.juniper.net /JSA11222
vendor-advisory

Sources

CVE List CVE-2021-31359
NVD CVE-2021-31359

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