dbcve.org
FedoraOperating system · Fedoraproject

CVE-2021-45083

HIGH · 7.1 CVSS v3.1 Published 2022-02-20
Fix available
A fix is available. Upgrade to 3.3.1 or later.
See remediation →
73/100
Remediation priority · Elevated
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
An issue was discovered in Cobbler before 3.3.1. Files in /etc/cobbler are world readable. Two of those files contain some sensitive information that can be exposed to a local user who has non-privileged access to the server. The users.digest file contains the sha2-512 digest of users in a Cobbler local installation. In the case of an easy-to-guess password, it's trivial to obtain the plaintext string. The settings.yaml file contains secrets such as the hashed default password.

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
How this class of weakness works · CWE-276

Files, directories, or resources ship with permissions more open than they need to be, so unintended users can read or modify them. Attackers look for exactly these loose defaults. Remediation means tightening permissions to the minimum required and verifying them at install and at runtime.

General guidance for the incorrect default permissions 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
FedoraOperating system
Affected:= 34= 35= 36
CobblerApplication
Affected:< 3.3.1

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

CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/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 · scoped
Upgrade available Upgrade to 3.3.1 or later
Fixed in 3.3.1
Vendor patch www.openwall.com →
Recommended fix High confidence

Cobbler 3.3.1

  1. 1. Update Cobbler to version 3.3.1 or later using your system's package manager (e.g., `dnf update cobbler` for Fedora)
  2. 2. After updating, verify that the files in /etc/cobbler are no longer world-readable by running: `ls -la /etc/cobbler/`
  3. 3. Confirm that users.digest and settings.yaml have permissions 640 or more restrictive (e.g., `stat -c '%a %n' /etc/cobbler/users.digest /etc/cobbler/settings.yaml`)
  4. 4. If permissions are still incorrect after update, manually fix with: `chmod 640 /etc/cobbler/users.digest /etc/cobbler/settings.yaml` and `chmod 750 /etc/cobbler/`
  5. 5. Restart the cobbler service to ensure new configuration is loaded: `systemctl restart cobblerd`
Caveat Review Cobbler 3.3.1 release notes for any breaking changes before upgrading in production environments

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 $1,250. Get the upgrade done

Scan for this in your stack

Free · runs locally
dbcve dependency scanner

Check whether your project pulls in CVE-2021-45083 — or any other known-vulnerable package — straight from your lock files. Free and open source; it runs locally and uploads nothing.

Get it on GitHub Scan in the browser

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-2021-45083 in production — separate from our analysis above.

No notes yet

Be the first to add a field note for this CVE — a mitigation you’ve verified, a version caveat, or a link to a working fix. Sign in above to contribute.

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