CVE-2021-40507
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 · uneditedAn issue was discovered in the ALU unit of the OR1200 (aka OpenRISC 1200) processor 2011-09-10 through 2015-11-11. The overflow flag is not being updated correctly for the subtract instruction, which results in an incorrect value in the overflow flag. Any software that relies on this flag may experience corruption in execution.
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 mechanism that verifies who a user is can be side-stepped or fooled, letting an attacker act as someone they're not. Everything built on top of that identity then becomes untrustworthy. Fixing it means hardening the full authentication flow, including edge cases, tokens, and secondary paths.
General guidance for the improper authentication 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>= 2011-09-10, <= 2015-11-11CVSS 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
- None
- Scope
- Unchanged
- Confidentiality
- High
- Integrity
- High
- Availability
- High
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/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 · scopedApply commit 2c0765d7ba12813df273cd693a99c4e744f0fbd5 to the relevant source branch, or update to a release after 2015-11-11 that includes this fix
- 1. Navigate to the OR1200 repository at https://github.com/openrisc/or1200
- 2. Locate the ALU unit source file(s) that handle the subtract instruction overflow flag logic
- 3. Apply the fix from commit 2c0765d7ba12813df273cd693a99c4e744f0fbd5, which corrects the overflow flag calculation for the subtract (l.sub) instruction
- 4. Rebuild the firmware with the corrected ALU unit
- 5. Test that the overflow flag now correctly reflects overflow/underflow conditions for subtract operations
- 6. Verify any software relying on the overflow flag behaves correctly after the fix
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-2021-40507 — 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-2021-40507 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
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- Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
- No weaponised exploit code, or anything meant to cause harm
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