Privilege escalation in Elastic Apm Agent

CVE-2021-37941

A local privilege escalation issue was found with the APM Java agent, where a user on the system could attach a malicious file to an application running with the APM Java agent. Using this vector, a malicious or compromised user account could use the agent to run commands at a higher level of permissions than they possess. This vulnerability affects users that have set up the agent via the attacher cli 3, the attach API 2, as well as users that have enabled the profiling_inferred_spans_enabled option

Vulnerability class: Privilege Escalation

EPSS: 0.002 (11.1th percentile) — read the EPSS interpretation.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 7.8 (High). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H.

Affected products

Weakness classification (CWE)

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2021-37941?
CVE-2021-37941 is a high-severity vulnerability in Elastic Apm Agent, classified under Improper Privilege Management. CVSS score: 7.8/10. Published 2021-12-08.
How severe is CVE-2021-37941?
High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 7.8 out of 10.