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CVE-2021-4007: Rapid7 Insight Agent Privilege Escalation

• Severity: high (CVSS 7.8 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 0.3% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2021-12-14 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-427

Description

Rapid7 Insight Agent, versions 3.0.1 to 3.1.2.34, suffer from a local privilege escalation due to an uncontrolled DLL search path. Specifically, when Insight Agent versions 3.0.1 to 3.1.2.34 start, the Python interpreter attempts to load python3.dll at "C:\DLLs\python3.dll," which normally is writable by locally authenticated users. Because of this, a malicious local user could use Insight Agent's startup conditions to elevate to SYSTEM privileges. This issue was fixed in Rapid7 Insight Agent 3.1.2.35. This vulnerability is a regression of CVE-2019-5629.

Affected products

• Rapid7 Insight Agent: from 3.0.1 before 3.1.2.35 — fixed in 3.1.2.35

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Rapid7 Insight Agent 3.1.2.35. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=2019-5629
• https://docs.rapid7.com/release-notes/insightagent/20211210/
• https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=2019-5629
• https://docs.rapid7.com/release-notes/insightagent/20211210/

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