Skip to content
Fencer Vulns
critical 9.6

CVE-2021-32829 json

Post-authentication Remote Code Execution (RCE) in ZStack REST API

published 2021-08-17 5 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2021-19569

cvss
9.6
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
2.9%
EPSS 2.9% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 87%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

ZStack is open source IaaS(infrastructure as a service) software aiming to automate datacenters, managing resources of compute, storage, and networking all by APIs. Affected versions of ZStack REST API are vulnerable to post-authentication Remote Code Execution (RCE) via bypass of the Groovy shell sandbox. The REST API exposes the GET zstack/v1/batch-queries?script endpoint which is backed up by the BatchQueryAction class. Messages are represented by the APIBatchQueryMsg, dispatched to the QueryFacadeImpl facade and handled by the BatchQuery class. The HTTP request parameter script is mapped to the APIBatchQueryMsg.script property and evaluated as a Groovy script in BatchQuery.query the evaluation of the user-controlled Groovy script is sandboxed by SandboxTransformer which will apply the restrictions defined in the registered (sandbox.register()) GroovyInterceptor. Even though the sandbox heavily restricts the receiver types to a small set of allowed types, the sandbox is non effective at controlling any code placed in Java annotations and therefore vulnerable to meta-programming escapes. This issue leads to post-authenticated remote code execution. For more details see the referenced GHSL-2021-065. This issue is patched in versions 3.8.21, 3.10.8, and 4.1.0.

Patch / fix

  • zstack rest_api 3.8.21, 3.10.8

Exploit prediction

2.90% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 87% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

Exploits and checks

  • securitylab.github.com https://securitylab.github.com/advisories/GHSL-2021-065-zstack/ referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 9.6 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:N
NVD 3.1 9.9 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD 2.0 6.5 AV:N/AC:L/Au:S/C:P/I:P/A:P

Affected products

  • zstackio zstack

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-94 Improper Control of Generation of Code
  • CWE-863 Incorrect Authorization

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.