CVE-2021-34864 is a local privilege escalation vulnerability affecting Parallels Desktop 16.1.3 (49160). It stems from improper access control within the WinAppHelper component, allowing a low-privileged attacker on the guest system to escalate privileges to the hypervisor. With a CVSS score of 8.8 (High), this flaw enables arbitrary code execution with significant impact on confidentiality, integrity, and availability. While no public exploits or Metasploit modules are available, it has garnered some community discussion and media coverage, though it is not listed in CISA's KEV catalog.
| Vendor | Product | Version(s) | CPE |
|---|---|---|---|
16.1.3CPE matchmatch criteria | cpe:2.3:a:parallels:parallels_desktop:16.1.3:*:*:*:*:macos:*:* |
CVSS version used by this source: 3.0
CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
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.
The average CVE in this peer group has 0.3 InfoSec Media, 0.0 Vendor Blog, and 0.0 Security Researcher mentions.
Remediation records are not available for this CVE.