CVE-2021-21069: Adobe Creative Cloud Privilege Escalation Vulnerability

Severity: critical (CVSS 9.3 v2.0)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 2.6% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2021-03-12 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-20

Description

Adobe Creative Cloud Desktop Application version 5.3 (and earlier) is affected by a local privilege escalation vulnerability that could allow an attacker to call functions against the installer to perform high privileged actions. Exploitation of this issue does not require user interaction.

Affected products

Adobe Creative Cloud (desktop component): through 5.3

References

https://helpx.adobe.com/security/products/creative-cloud/apsb21-18.html
https://www.zerodayinitiative.com/advisories/ZDI-21-281/
https://helpx.adobe.com/security/products/creative-cloud/apsb21-18.html
https://www.zerodayinitiative.com/advisories/ZDI-21-281/

Get alerted when CVE-2021-21069 or the next vulnerability affects your stack