THREATPORT/VULNERABILITY/CVE-2021-25217
HIGH SEVERITY

CVE-2021-25217

Dhcp vulnerability

CVSS
7.4
EPSS
6.1%
EPSS pct
93th
Exploited
No known
In ISC DHCP 4.1-ESV-R1 -> 4.1-ESV-R16, ISC DHCP 4.4.0 -> 4.4.2 (Other branches of ISC DHCP (i.e., releases in the 4.0.x series or lower and releases in the 4.3.x series) are beyond their End-of-Life (EOL) and no longer supported by ISC. From inspection it is clear that the defect is also present in releases from those series, but they have not been officially tested for the vulnerability), The outcome of encountering the defect while reading a lease that will trigger it varies, according to: the component being affected (i.e., dhclient or dhcpd) whether the package was built as a 32-bit or 64-bit binary whether the compiler flag -fstack-protection-strong was used when compiling In dhclient, ISC has not successfully reproduced the error on a 64-bit system. However, on a 32-bit system it is possible to cause dhclient to crash when reading an improper lease, which could cause network connectivity problems for an affected system due to the absence of a running DHCP client process. In dhcpd, when run in DHCPv4 or DHCPv6 mode: if the dhcpd server binary was built for a 32-bit architecture AND the -fstack-protection-strong flag was specified to the compiler, dhcpd may exit while parsing a lease file containing an objectionable lease, resulting in lack of service to clients. Additionally, the offending lease and the lease immediately following it in the lease database may be improperly deleted. if the dhcpd server binary was built for a 64-bit architecture OR if the -fstack-protection-strong compiler flag was NOT specified, the crash will not occur, but it is possible for the offending lease and the lease which immediately followed it to be improperly deleted.
Affected vendor
Isc
Affected product
Dhcp
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:A/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:N/A:H
Weakness type (CWE)
  • CWE-119 — Improper Restriction of Operations within Memory Bounds
Published
2021-05-26

Risk analysis

Based on its CVSS vector, this vulnerability is exploitable from an adjacent network, low attack complexity, requiring no privileges, no user interaction. Successful exploitation leads to high impact to availability.

Its EPSS score of 6.1% reflects a lower probability of exploitation activity in the wild over the next 30 days, placing it above 93% of all scored CVEs.

Check your external exposure to CVE-2021-25217

  • Confirm whether Isc Dhcp is running on any internet-facing host or subdomain.
  • Match discovered service fingerprints against the version affected by CVE-2021-25217.
  • Prioritise remediation if the asset is public, business-critical, or near authentication/payment flows.

How ThreatPort helps with CVE-2021-25217

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