What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2021-3042: Cortex XDR Agent: Improper Control of User-Controlled File Leads to Local Privilege Escalation

• Severity: high (CVSS 7.2 v2.0)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 0.2% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2021-07-15 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-427

Description

A local privilege escalation (PE) vulnerability exists in the Palo Alto Networks Cortex XDR agent on Windows platforms that enables an authenticated local Windows user to execute programs with SYSTEM privileges. Exploiting this vulnerability requires the user to have file creation privilege in the Windows root directory (such as C:\). This issue impacts: All versions of Cortex XDR agent 6.1 without content update 181 or a later version; All versions of Cortex XDR agent 7.2 without content update 181 or a later version; All versions of Cortex XDR agent 7.3 without content update 181 or a later version. Cortex XDR agent 5.0 versions are not impacted by this issue. Content updates are required to resolve this issue and are automatically applied for the agent.

Affected products

• Palo Alto Networks Cortex XDR Agent: 6.1, 7.2, 7.2-content_update149, 7.2-content_update150, 7.3
• Palo Alto Networks Cortex XDR Agent: 6.1.* without content update 181 or later, 7.2.* without content update 181 or later

References

• https://security.paloaltonetworks.com/CVE-2021-3042
• https://security.paloaltonetworks.com/CVE-2021-3042

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