What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities
CVE-2021-25281
- Severity: critical (CVSS 9.8 v3.1)
- Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
- EPSS: 73.1% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
- Public exploit or detection template: yes
- Published: 2021-02-27 · updated 2026-06-17
- Weakness: CWE-287
Description
An issue was discovered in through SaltStack Salt before 3002.5. salt-api does not honor eauth credentials for the wheel_async client. Thus, an attacker can remotely run any wheel modules on the master.
Affected products
- Debian Linux: 9.0, 10.0, 11.0
- Fedoraproject Fedora: 32, 33, 34
- VMware SALT: before 2015.8.10; from 2015.8.11 before 2015.8.13; from 2016.3.0 before 2016.3.4; from 2016.3.5 before 2016.3.6; from 2016.3.7 before 2016.3.8; from 2016.3.9 before 2016.11.3 — fixed in 2015.8.10, 2015.8.13, 2016.11.10, 2016.11.3, 2016.11.5, 2016.3.4
How to fix
Upgrade to a fixed version: VMware SALT 2015.8.10, 2015.8.13, 2016.11.10, 2016.11.3. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.
References
- http://packetstormsecurity.com/files/162058/SaltStack-Salt-API-Unauthenticated-Remote-Command-Execution.html
- https://github.com/saltstack/salt/releases
- https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2021/11/msg00009.html
- https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/7GRVZ5WAEI3XFN2BDTL6DDXFS5HYSDVB/
- https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/FUGLOJ6NXLCIFRD2JTXBYQEMAEF2B6XH/
- https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/YOGNT2XWPOYV7YT75DN7PS4GIYWFKOK5/
- https://saltproject.io/security_announcements/active-saltstack-cve-release-2021-feb-25/
- https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/202103-01
- https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/202310-22
- https://www.debian.org/security/2021/dsa-5011
- https://www.saltstack.com/blog/active-saltstack-cve-announced-2021-jan-21/
- http://packetstormsecurity.com/files/162058/SaltStack-Salt-API-Unauthenticated-Remote-Command-Execution.html
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