FedoraOperating system · Fedoraproject

CVE-2021-21996

HIGH · 7.5 CVSS v3.1 Published 2021-09-08
Fix available
A fix is available. Upgrade to 3000.3 or later.
See remediation →
81/100
Remediation priority · High
Remotely reachable Zero-click Patch available

Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.

NVD · unedited
An issue was discovered in SaltStack Salt before 3003.3. A user who has control of the source, and source_hash URLs can gain full file system access as root on a salt minion.

Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.

dbcve analysis

A detailed technical summary for this CVE is being prepared.

Affected products & versions What the vendor confirmedThe version ranges the vendor confirmed as vulnerable. If your version sits inside a range here, treat yourself as exposed until you have upgraded.

NVD · CPE data
FedoraOperating system
Affected:= 33= 34= 35
Debian LinuxOperating system
Affected:= 9.0= 10.0= 11.0
SaltApplication
Affected:< 3000.3

CVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.

From the vector
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
High
Privileges
Low
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
High
Availability
High

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.

dbcve · scoped
Upgrade available Upgrade to 3000.3 or later
Fixed in 3000.3
Vendor patch saltproject.io →
Recommended fix High confidence

Salt 3003.3 or later (3004.x recommended)

  1. 1. Backup your Salt configuration files (/etc/salt/)
  2. 2. For Debian/Ubuntu systems: Run 'apt-get update && apt-get install salt-minion' to upgrade to the latest available version
  3. 3. For Fedora systems: Run 'dnf update salt-minion' to upgrade to the latest available version
  4. 4. Restart the salt-minion service: 'systemctl restart salt-minion'
  5. 5. Verify the version running: 'salt-minion --version' and confirm it shows 3003.3 or later
Caveat Review Salt release notes for any breaking changes between your current version and the target version before upgrading

Generated from the published advisory — verify against the referenced sources before acting.

We can perform the upgrade in your staging environment and verify nothing breaks — typical engagement from $1,950. Get the upgrade done

Scan for this in your stack

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dbcve dependency scanner

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References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.

Primary sources

Practitioner notes

Contributed

Peer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2021-21996 in production — separate from our analysis above.

No notes yet

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What this is

A place for practitioners to share what actually worked: a mitigation you’ve tested, a configuration change, a version- or environment-specific caveat, or a link to a verified patch. The most useful notes rise to the top as peers upvote them, so the signal stays high.

What belongs here
  • Verified mitigations, workarounds, and config changes
  • Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
  • No weaponised exploit code, or anything meant to cause harm
  • No spam, self-promotion, credentials, or personal data