CVE-2021-23876
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 · uneditedBypass Remote Procedure call in McAfee Total Protection (MTP) prior to 16.0.30 allows a local user to gain elevated privileges and perform arbitrary file modification as the SYSTEM user potentially causing Denial of Service via executing carefully constructed malware.
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 · moderate confidenceMcAfee Total Protection prior to 16.0.30 contains a Remote Procedure Call (RPC) bypass vulnerability that allows a local authenticated user to escalate privileges to SYSTEM level and perform arbitrary file modifications, potentially enabling denial of service through malicious payload execution.
Verify against the referenced sources before acting — the references below are authoritative for this CVE, this summary is not.
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< 16.0.30CVSS 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
- Local
- Complexity
- Low
- Privileges
- Low
- User interaction
- None
- Scope
- Unchanged
- Confidentiality
- High
- Integrity
- High
- Availability
- High
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Am I affected? How to checkSteps we derive from the advisory and the affected-version data, so you can decide whether this CVE reaches your setup. They are a guide, not a scan — your own configuration is the authority.
dbcve checksWork through these to decide whether this CVE applies to you.
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Identify McAfee Total Protection installationOpen Windows Control Panel > Programs and Features, or check the Start Menu for McAfee Total Protection iconAffected if McAfee Total Protection is not installed on the system
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Determine installed version numberOpen McAfee Total Protection, click the gear icon or menu, select 'About' or 'Subscription' to view the product versionAffected if Unable to determine the version from the UI
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Compare version to vulnerable rangeNote the full version displayed (format is typically 16.0.x). Compare numerically to 16.0.30 - any version with major.minor where the minor version is less than 30, or any 16.0.x version below 16.0.30, is in the vulnerable rangeAffected if Installed version is 16.0.29 or lower (e.g., 16.0.29, 16.0.20, 16.0.10)
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Verify RPC service statusOpen Windows Services (services.msc) and locate McAfee services, particularly any RPC-related services. The vulnerability exploits the RPC interface, so confirming the product is actively running its services helps validate exploitabilityAffected if McAfee Total Protection services are running and version is below 16.0.30
If McAfee Total Protection is installed with a version lower than 16.0.30 and the services are active, the system is vulnerable to this RPC bypass privilege escalation flaw
Generated from the published advisory. Verify against your own configuration.
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.
From vendor data16.0.30
Upgrade McAfee Total Protection to version 16.0.30 or later to apply the vendor patch that addresses the RPC bypass vulnerability.
- Consultation2.0 h
- Implementation1.0 h
- Testing2.0 h
- Review / QA1.0 h
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Scan for this in your stack
Free · runs locallyCheck whether your project pulls in CVE-2021-23876 — or any other known-vulnerable package — straight from your lock files. Free and open source; it runs locally and uploads nothing.
References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.
Primary sourcesPractitioner notes
ContributedPeer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2021-23876 in production — separate from our analysis above.
The advisory tells you what broke. It rarely tells you what actually worked. If you’ve dealt with this one, that detail is what the next engineer is searching for.
- The version that genuinely resolved it — not the one the vendor claimed
- A config change or rule that shut the vector down
- A gotcha in the upgrade path that cost you an afternoon
No notes yet
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- 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