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CISA KEV · ACTIVELY EXPLOITED
CRITICAL severity

CVE-2021-22681

CRITICAL

CVE-2021-22681 is a critical-severity (CVSS 9.8) CWE-522 vulnerability. It is in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2026-03-05) — treat it as actively exploited and patch now. No vendor fix is recorded yet; mitigation options are listed below.

Rockwell Automation Studio 5000 Logix Designer Versions 21 and later, and RSLogix 5000 Versions 16 through 20 use a key to verify Logix controllers are communicating with Rockwell Automation…

Published
Updated
Affected
3 products
Patched
See advisory
Exploits
None indexed
Exploitation data as of Oct 22, 2026 · OSV.dev, NVD, CISA KEV, FIRST.org (EPSS)

Exploitation Status

Actively exploited in the wild

  • Confirmed by CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on 2026-03-05. Federal agencies were required to remediate by 2026-03-26.
  • CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
  • A successful exploit gives an attacker total control of the affected component, not partial access.

Exploitation and automatability from CISA (KEV catalog and SSVC triage) for CVE-2021-22681.

EPSS Exploitation Probability

via FIRST.org ↗
63.6%probability of exploitation in next 30 days
High Risk0.00%
Lower risk than most CVEs99th percentile — riskier than 99% of all scored CVEsHighest risk
0.00%26.3%52.6%78.8%12.9%63.6%Apr 26Aug 26Oct 26

Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.

How urgent is this, really

CVE-2021-22681 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). In the shaded patch-first corner (EPSS 50%+, CVSS 7.0+).

Where this sits among everything scored

Of 395,249 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the 50–90% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.

Description

Rockwell Automation Studio 5000 Logix Designer Versions 21 and later, and RSLogix 5000 Versions 16 through 20 use a key to verify Logix controllers are communicating with Rockwell Automation CompactLogix 1768, 1769, 5370, 5380, 5480: ControlLogix 5550, 5560, 5570, 5580; DriveLogix 5560, 5730, 1794-L34; Compact GuardLogix 5370, 5380; GuardLogix 5570, 5580; SoftLogix 5800. Rockwell Automation Studio 5000 Logix Designer Versions 21 and later and RSLogix 5000: Versions 16 through 20 are vulnerable because an unauthenticated attacker could bypass this verification mechanism and authenticate with Rockwell Automation CompactLogix 1768, 1769, 5370, 5380, 5480: ControlLogix 5550, 5560, 5570, 5580; DriveLogix 5560, 5730, 1794-L34; Compact GuardLogix 5370, 5380; GuardLogix 5570, 5580; SoftLogix 5800.

Affected Products

3 products · 3 configurations
Application
factorytalk services platformrockwellautomation
≥ 2.10
range
Application
rslogix 5000rockwellautomation
≥ 16 && ≤ 20
range
Application
studio 5000 logix designerrockwellautomation
≥ 21.0
range

Detection & mitigation playbook

Vulnerability

  1. Detect

    Identify every host running the affected component and compare the installed build against the fixed version below — for source-built or distro-packaged software the version string, not a lockfile, is the source of truth (`dpkg -l`, `rpm -q`, or the binary's own `--version`).

  2. Remediation status

    No fixed release is recorded for CVE-2021-22681 yet. Track the upstream advisory, and apply the exposure-reduction steps below in the meantime.

  3. Mitigate without a patch

    If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.

Frequently Asked Questions

Rockwell Automation Studio 5000 Logix Designer Versions 21 and later, and RSLogix 5000 Versions 16 through 20 use a key to verify Logix controllers are communicating with Rockwell Automation CompactLogix 1768, 1769, 5370, 5380, 5480: ControlLogix 5550, 5560, 5570, 5580; DriveLogix 5560, 5730, 1794-L34; Compact GuardLogix 5370, 5380; GuardLogix 5570, 5580; SoftLogix 5800. Rockwell Automation Studio 5000 Logix Designer Versions 21 and later and RSLogix 5000: Versions 16 through 20 are vulnerable because an unauthenticated attacker could bypass this verification mechanism and authenticate with Ro
O3 Security · Impact-Aware SCA

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CVE-2021-22681: Critical 9.8 (KEV)