CVE-2021-44529 — Endpoint Manager Cloud Services Appliance
CRITICALCVE-2021-44529 is a critical-severity (CVSS 9.8) Code Injection vulnerability in ivanti endpoint manager cloud services appliance. It is in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2024-03-25) and has been used in ransomware campaigns — treat it as actively exploited and patch now. No vendor fix is recorded yet; mitigation options are listed below.
A code injection vulnerability in the Ivanti EPM Cloud Services Appliance (CSA) allows an unauthenticated user to execute arbitrary code with limited permissions (nobody).
Exploitation Status
Actively exploited in the wild
- Confirmed by CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on 2024-03-25 — including use in ransomware campaigns. Federal agencies were required to remediate by 2024-04-15.
- 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-2021-44529.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2021-44529 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 394,415 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the ≥ 90% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.
Description
A code injection vulnerability in the Ivanti EPM Cloud Services Appliance (CSA) allows an unauthenticated user to execute arbitrary code with limited permissions (nobody).
Affected Products
endpoint manager cloud services applianceivantiResearch use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.
Ivanti Endpoint Manager 4.6 - Remote Code Execution (RCE)
by d7x · Mar 22, 2022
Detection & mitigation playbook
Vendor / applianceDetect
Inventory every ivanti endpoint manager cloud services appliance deployment and check each version against the affected-products list above.
Remediation status
No patch has shipped for CVE-2021-44529 yet — track the ivanti endpoint manager cloud services appliance advisory for a fixed release and apply the workarounds below in the meantime.
Mitigate without a patch
Stop passing untrusted input into the interpreter or shell: call the affected binary with an argument array rather than a composed command string, reject anything outside a strict allowlist of expected values, and run the component under an account that cannot reach beyond the work it legitimately does. Alongside that, restrict the management interface to trusted networks and apply the vendor's recommended configuration mitigations.
How to detect CVE-2021-44529
A community-maintained Nuclei template exists for this CVE. You can scan for it directly:
nuclei -id cve-2021-44529 -u https://target- Template
- Ivanti EPM Cloud Services Appliance Code Injection
- Severity
- critical
- Impact
- Successful exploitation of this vulnerability could lead to remote code execution and compromise of the affected system.
- Remediation
- Apply the latest security patches provided by Ivanti to mitigate this vulnerability.
Template by ProjectDiscovery nuclei-templates (duty_1g, phyr3wall, Tirtha), MIT licensed. View the full template. Scan only systems you are authorised to test.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2021-44529 being exploited in your environment?
Detect and block the exploit chain at execution, on systems you cannot patch yet.