Unitrends BackupApplication · Kaseya

CVE-2021-43040

HIGH · 8.8 CVSS v3.1 Published 2021-12-06
Fix available
A fix is available. Upgrade to 10.5.5 or later.
See remediation →
94/100
Remediation priority · Urgent
Public exploit Remotely reachable Zero-click

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 Kaseya Unitrends Backup Appliance before 10.5.5. The privileged vaultServer could be leveraged to create arbitrary writable files, leading to privilege escalation.

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
Unitrends BackupApplication
Affected:>= 10.0, < 10.5.5

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
Low
Privileges
Low
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
High
Availability
High

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/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 10.5.5 or later
Fixed in 10.5.5
Recommended fix High confidence

10.5.5

  1. Verify current Unitrends Backup version by checking the appliance administration console or using the command line interface
  2. Download Unitrends Backup version 10.5.5 from the official Kaseya download portal or contact Kaseya support for the upgrade package
  3. Review the Kaseya Unitrends Backup upgrade documentation for version 10.5.5
  4. Execute the upgrade process following the official upgrade procedure, typically through the appliance web interface or CLI
  5. After upgrade, verify the vaultServer component is updated and functioning correctly
  6. Confirm the version is 10.5.5 or later to ensure the vulnerability is patched

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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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-2021-43040 in production — separate from our analysis above.

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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