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Fencer Vulns
high 7.3

CVE-2021-38295 json

Privilege escalation vulnerability when using HTML attachments

published 2021-10-14 5 y ago modified 2026-09-08 2 mo ago also BIT-couchdb-2021-38295 , EUVD-2021-24752

cvss
7.3
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
2.7%
EPSS 2.7% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 86%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

In Apache CouchDB, a malicious user with permission to create documents in a database is able to attach a HTML attachment to a document. If a CouchDB admin opens that attachment in a browser, e.g. via the CouchDB admin interface Fauxton, any JavaScript code embedded in that HTML attachment will be executed within the security context of that admin. A similar route is available with the already deprecated _show and _list functionality. This privilege escalation vulnerability allows an attacker to add or remove data in any database or make configuration changes. This issue affected Apache CouchDB prior to 3.1.2

Patch / fix

  • bitnami couchdb 3.1.2
  • Apache Software Foundation Apache CouchDB 3.1.2
  • Apache Software Foundation IBM Cloudant 8201
  • couchdb Arch Linux 3.1.2-1

arch linux advisories AVG-2458

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-2021-38295 updated cvss 7.3

couchdb: forget HTML attachment may lead to privileges escalation

  • Red Hat JBoss Fuse 6 camel-couchdb camel-couchdb
    affected: no fix planned “Out of support scope”
  • Red Hat Fuse 7 camel-couchdb camel-couchdb Red Hat Integration Camel K 1 camel-couchdb camel-couchdb Red Hat Integration Camel Quarkus 1 camel-couchdb camel-couchdb
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

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

2.75% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 86% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.1 7.3 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD 2.0 6.0 AV:N/AC:M/Au:S/C:P/I:P/A:P
OSV 3.1 7.3 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
bitnami couchdb
<3.1.2
3.1.2

Affected products

  • Apache Software Foundation Apache CouchDB
  • Apache Software Foundation IBM Cloudant

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-79 Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation

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.