CVE-2024-21545

Severity: high (CVSS 8.2 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.4% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2024-09-25 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-73

Description

Proxmox Virtual Environment is an open-source server management platform for enterprise virtualization. Insufficient safeguards against malicious API response values allow authenticated attackers with 'Sys.Audit' or 'VM.Monitor' privileges to download arbitrary host files via the API. When handling the result from a request handler before returning it to the user, the handle_api2_request function will check for the ‘download’ or ‘data’->’download’ objects inside the request handler call response object. If present, handle_api2_request will read a local file defined by this object and return it to the user. Two endpoints were identified which can control the object returned by a request handler sufficiently that the ’download’ object is defined and user controlled. This results in arbitrary file read. The privileges of this file read can result in full compromise of the system by various impacts such as disclosing sensitive files allowing for privileged session forgery.

Affected products

Proxmox Mail Gateway: from 6.0 before 7.2; from 8.0 before 8.1-1 — fixed in 7.2, 8.1-1
Proxmox Virtual Environment: from 6.0 before 7.3; from 8.0 before 8.2-2 — fixed in 7.3, 8.2-2

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Proxmox Mail Gateway 7.2, 8.1-1; Proxmox Virtual Environment 7.3, 8.2-2. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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