CVE-2021-38721
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 · uneditedFUEL CMS 1.5.0 login.php contains a cross-site request forgery (CSRF) vulnerability
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 analysisThe application can't tell whether a state-changing request was genuinely intended by the user, so an attacker can trick a logged-in victim's browser into making it. That can transfer funds, change settings, or create accounts silently. Remediation is anti-CSRF tokens — or equivalent same-site protections — on every state-changing request.
General guidance for the cross-site request forgery (csrf) class — the official description and references above are authoritative for this specific CVE. Want a bespoke review and a reviewed fix? Ask our team →
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= 1.5.0CVSS 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
- Low
- Privileges
- None
- User interaction
- Required
- Scope
- Unchanged
- Confidentiality
- None
- Integrity
- High
- Availability
- None
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N
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 · scopedLatest FUEL-CMS version (1.5.1 or higher)
- 1. Backup your current Fuel CMS installation and database before proceeding
- 2. Download the latest version of FUEL CMS from the official repository at https://github.com/daylightstudio/FUEL-CMS
- 3. Alternatively, if you cannot do a full upgrade, you can apply the specific patch by examining commit 6164cd794674d4d74da39f8b535ff588ab006e33 which adds CSRF token validation to the login form
- 4. To apply the patch manually: locate your login.php file in the fuel/application/controllers/ directory
- 5. Add CSRF token generation and validation to the login form - the patch adds a CSRF token field to the login form and validates it on submission
- 6. Test the login functionality after applying the fix to ensure legitimate users can still authenticate
- 7. Verify the fix by confirming the login form now includes a hidden CSRF token field and the backend validates it
Generated from the published advisory — verify against the referenced sources before acting.
Scan for this in your stack
Free · runs locallyCheck whether your project pulls in CVE-2021-38721 — 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-2021-38721 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