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Fencer Vulns
high 7.8

CVE-2021-44730 json

snapd could be made to escalate privileges and run programs as administrator

published 2022-02-17 4 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2021-31545

cvss
7.8
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.4%
EPSS 0.4% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 28%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

snapd 2.54.2 did not properly validate the location of the snap-confine binary. A local attacker who can hardlink this binary to another location to cause snap-confine to execute other arbitrary binaries and hence gain privilege escalation. Fixed in snapd versions 2.54.3+18.04, 2.54.3+20.04 and 2.54.3+21.10.1

Patch / fix

  • snapd Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 2.54.3-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2021-44730

  • snapd Ubuntu 18.04 LTS 2.54.3+18.04
  • snapd Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 2.54.3+20.04.1
  • snapd Ubuntu Pro 14.04 LTS 2.54.3+14.04~esm1
  • snapd Ubuntu Pro 16.04 LTS 2.54.3+16.04~esm2

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2021-44730

Ubuntu security data © Canonical Ltd., from https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

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-2021-44730 updated cvss 7.0

snapd: Hardlink attack in snap-confine's sc_open_snapd_tool()

  • Red Hat All currently supported Red Hat products
    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

0.35% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 28% 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:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD 3.1 8.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD 2.0 6.9 AV:L/AC:M/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C

Affected products

  • Canonical Ltd. snapd

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-59 Improper Link Resolution Before File Access

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.