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CISA KEV · ACTIVELY EXPLOITED
LOW severity

CVE-2021-44168 — Fortios

LOW

CVE-2021-44168 is a low-severity (CVSS 3.3) CWE-494 vulnerability in fortinet fortios. It is in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2021-12-10) — treat it as actively exploited and patch now. A fix is available — see the affected versions and patch details below.

A download of code without integrity check vulnerability in the "execute restore src-vis" command of FortiOS before 7.0.3 may allow a local authenticated attacker to download arbitrary…

Published
Updated
Affected
1 product
Patched
See advisory
Exploits
4 known
Exploitation data as of Oct 23, 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 2021-12-10. Federal agencies were required to remediate by 2021-12-24.

Exploitation and automatability from CISA (KEV catalog and SSVC triage) for CVE-2021-44168.

EPSS Exploitation Probability

via FIRST.org ↗
0.9%probability of exploitation in next 30 days
Lower Risk0.00%
Lower risk than most CVEs58th percentile — riskier than 58% of all scored CVEsHighest risk
0.36%0.79%1.22%1.65%1.1%0.9%Apr 26Aug 26Oct 26

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

How urgent is this, really

CVE-2021-44168 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). Outside the shaded patch-first corner.

Where this sits among everything scored

Of 395,249 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.

Description

A download of code without integrity check vulnerability in the "execute restore src-vis" command of FortiOS before 7.0.3 may allow a local authenticated attacker to download arbitrary files on the device via specially crafted update packages.

Affected Products

1 product · 4 configurations
OS
fortiosfortinet
≥ 7.0.0 && < 7.0.3
range
Exploits & PoCs
4

Research use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.

A download of code without integrity check vulnerability in the "execute…

fortiguard.comAPIDec 2021

A download of code without integrity check vulnerability in the "execute…

cisa.govCISADec 2021

A download of code without integrity check vulnerability in the "execute…

github.comGithubFeb 2023

Detection & mitigation playbook

Vendor / appliance

  1. Detect

    Inventory every fortinet fortios deployment and check each version against the affected-products list above.

  2. Fix

    Apply the fortinet fortios security patch or hotfix for CVE-2021-44168 on the affected version, following the vendor advisory for your exact build.

  3. Workarounds

    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. Alongside that, restrict the management interface to trusted networks and apply the vendor's recommended configuration mitigations.

Frequently Asked Questions

A download of code without integrity check vulnerability in the "execute restore src-vis" command of FortiOS before 7.0.3 may allow a local authenticated attacker to download arbitrary files on the device via specially crafted update packages.
O3 Security · Runtime Protection

Is CVE-2021-44168 being exploited in your environment?

Detect and block the exploit chain at execution, on systems you cannot patch yet.

Protect my workloads How runtime protection works
Actively Exploited: CVE-2021-44168: Fortios (Low 3.3)