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CVE-2021-21999

25
FAUCET Score

CVE-2021-21999 is a local privilege escalation vulnerability affecting VMware Tools for Windows, VMware Remote Console for Windows, and VMware App Volumes. An attacker with normal user access can exploit this by placing a specially named malicious file in an unrestricted directory, leading to code execution with elevated privileges. This high-severity vulnerability (CVSS 7.8) has a low attack complexity and can result in complete compromise of confidentiality, integrity, and availability. While there is no known active exploitation or public exploit code (Metasploit, Nuclei, ExploitDB), it has garnered significant community discussion and media coverage.

Impacted Technologies

VendorProductVersion(s)CPE
>= 2.0, < 2.18.10CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:a:vmware:app_volumes:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
>= 4, < 2103CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:a:vmware:app_volumes:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
>= 12.0.0, < 12.0.1CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:a:vmware:remote_console:*:*:*:*:*:windows:*:*
>= 11.0.0, < 11.2.6CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:a:vmware:tools:*:*:*:*:*:windows:*:*

CVSS Data

CVSS version used by this source: 3.1

7.8HIGH

CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Attack Vector
LOCAL
Attack Complexity
LOW
Privileges Required
LOW
User Interaction
NONE
Scope
UNCHANGED
Confidentiality Impact
HIGH
Integrity Impact
HIGH
Availability Impact
HIGH
Exploitability Score
1.8
Impact Score
5.9
CvssVersion
3.1

Exploit Intelligence

EPSS Score
1.46%
Probability of exploitation in next 30 days
EPSS Percentile
70.9%
Percentile rank of EPSS score among Peer Group
As of 2026-07-27
Model: v2026.06.15
This CVE's current EPSS score of 0.0146 is in the 95th percentile among its peer group of 17,061 CVEs.

Social Chatter

The average CVE in this peer group has 0.0 Twitter, 0.1 Reddit, 0.2 Bluesky, 0.1 Mastodon, and 0.2 GitHub mentions.

Media Mentions

The average CVE in this peer group has 0.3 InfoSec Media, 0.0 Vendor Blog, and 0.0 Security Researcher mentions.

Remediation

Patch Available

Vendor Patches (1)

vmwarepatch availablevia nvd_reference
View patch

References

vmware.com / security/advisories/VMSA-2021-0013.html
PatchVendor Advisory
zerodayinitiative.com / advisories/ZDI-21-754
Third Party AdvisoryVDB Entry