Acrobat Reader DC Use-After-Free Vulnerability Could Lead To Arbitrary Code Execution

published 2021-02-02 5 y ago modified 2026-07-08 4 mo ago also CVE-2021-21043 , GHSA-7r83-w6r8-fh6w , GHSA-f92j-qf46-p6vm , EUVD-2021-0551

cvss: 8.8; version 3.0, CNA
cisa kev: Not listed; not in CISA's catalog
epss: 4.3%; EPSS 4.3% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 91%
public exploits: 0; none known

Acrobat Reader DC versions versions 2020.013.20074 (and earlier), 2020.001.30018 (and earlier) and 2017.011.30188 (and earlier) are affected by a Use After Free vulnerability. An unauthenticated attacker could leverage this vulnerability to achieve arbitrary code execution in the context of the current user. Exploitation of this issue requires user interaction in that a victim must open a malicious file.

Patch / fix

fixed in 1 links 1

maven com.adobe.acs:acs-aem-commons 4.10.0

github.com/Adobe-Consulting-Services/acs-aem-commons@14d769c commit

Exploit prediction

4.29% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 91% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by	version	score	vector
CNA	3.0	8.8	CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD	3.1	8.8	CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD	2.0	6.8	AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P
GitHub	3.1	6.1	CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:N

Affected packages

ecosystem	package	affected	fixed in
maven	com.adobe.acs:acs-aem-commons	<4.10.0	4.10.0

Affected products

Adobe Acrobat Reader

Classification

Weakness

CWE-416 Use After Free
CWE-79 Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation
CWE-787 Out-of-bounds Write

References

Sources

CVE List CVE-2021-21028
GitHub Advisory GHSA-f92j-qf46-p6vm
GitHub Advisory GHSA-7r83-w6r8-fh6w
NVD CVE-2021-21028

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