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Not in CISA KEV
HIGH severity

CVE-2021-37941 — elastic-apm

HIGH

CVE-2021-37941 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.8) Improper Privilege Management vulnerability in elastic-apm. A fix is available for elastic-apm — see the affected versions and patch details below.

APM Java Agent Local Privilege Escalation

Also known asPYSEC-2026-634
Published
Updated
Affected
1 pkg
Patched
1 / 1
Exploits
None indexed
Exploitation data as of Oct 6, 2026 · OSV.dev, NVD, FIRST.org (EPSS)

EPSS Exploitation Probability

via FIRST.org ↗
0.2%probability of exploitation in next 30 days
Lower Risk+0.01%
Lower risk than most CVEs11th percentile — riskier than 11% of all scored CVEsHighest risk
0.00%0.24%0.48%0.71%0.0%0.2%Apr 26Aug 26Oct 26

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

How urgent is this, really

CVE-2021-37941 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). Outside the shaded patch-first corner.

Where this sits among everything scored

Of 385,987 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.

Real-World Exposure

1 pkg affected
🐍elastic-apm

Real-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects PyPI packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.

Description

A local privilege escalation issue was found with the APM Java agent, where a user on the system could attach a malicious file to an application running with the APM Java agent. Using this vector, a malicious or compromised user account could use the agent to run commands at a higher level of permissions than they possess. This vulnerability affects users that have set up the agent via the attacher cli 3, the attach API 2, as well as users that have enabled the profiling_inferred_spans_enabled option

Affected Packages

1 total 1 fixed
EcosystemPackageVulnerable rangeFix
🐍PyPIelastic-apm≥ 1.10.0&&< 1.27.01.27.0pip install --upgrade 'elastic-apm==1.27.0'

Affected Products

1 product · 1 configurations
Application
apm agentelastic
≥ 1.10.0 && ≤ 1.26.0
range

Detection & mitigation playbook

Open-source dependency

  1. Detect

    Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for elastic-apm, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.

  2. Fix

    Update elastic-apm to 1.27.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2021-37941 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.

  3. Workarounds

    Close the privilege gap rather than the entry point: audit which accounts, roles and service identities can reach the affected operation, drop the component to the least privilege it actually needs, and review file and directory permissions created by earlier installs — a default left in place is what makes this reachable.

Frequently Asked Questions

A local privilege escalation issue was found with the APM Java agent, where a user on the system could attach a malicious file to an application running with the APM Java agent. Using this vector, a malicious or compromised user account could use the agent to run commands at a higher level of permissions than they possess. This vulnerability affects users that have set up the agent via the attacher cli 3, the attach API 2, as well as users that have enabled the profiling_inferred_spans_enabled option
O3 Security · Impact-Aware SCA

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CVE-2021-37941: elastic-apm PrivEsc — Fixed in 1.27.0