OpencastApplication · Apereo

CVE-2021-43821

HIGH · 7.7 CVSS v3.1 Published 2021-12-14
Fix available
A fix is available. Upgrade to 10.6 or later.
See remediation →
83/100
Remediation priority · High
Public exploit 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
Opencast is an Open Source Lecture Capture & Video Management for Education. Opencast before version 9.10 or 10.6 allows references to local file URLs in ingested media packages, allowing attackers to include local files from Opencast's host machines and making them available via the web interface. Before Opencast 9.10 and 10.6, Opencast would open and include local files during ingests. Attackers could exploit this to include most local files the process has read access to, extracting secrets from the host machine. An attacker would need to have the privileges required to add new media to exploit this. But these are often widely given. The issue has been fixed in Opencast 10.6 and 11.0. You can mitigate this issue by narrowing down the read access Opencast has to files on the file system using UNIX permissions or mandatory access control systems like SELinux. This cannot prevent access to files Opencast needs to read though and we highly recommend updating.

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
OpencastApplication
Affected:< 10.6

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
Changed
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
None
Availability
None

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:N/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 · scoped
Upgrade available Upgrade to 10.6 or later
Fixed in 10.6
Vendor patch github.com →
Recommended fix High confidence

Opencast 10.6 or 11.0

  1. Upgrade Opencast to version 10.6 or version 11.0 to resolve the local file inclusion vulnerability
  2. After upgrading, verify that the ingest service properly rejects local file URLs in media packages
  3. Review and limit user permissions for media ingestion to ensure only trusted users can ingest content

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

Free · runs locally
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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-2021-43821 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