Vulnerability · Published Dec 8, 2021 · Assigned by elastic

CVE-2021-37941

High 7.8

In plain English

A high-severity privilege mismanagement in APM Java Agent from Elastic. There are no confirmed reports of exploitation so far. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 0.2% (higher than 12% of all known vulnerabilities). Fixed versions are available - upgrade the affected package.

Severity (CVSS NVD)7.8High

Exploit odds (30 days)0.2%top 88.1% of all CVEs

Exploited in the wildNo reportsnot in CISA KEV

Attack toolingNoneno public tooling known

Official 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 & fixed versions

Ecosystem	Package	Fixed in	Advisory
PyPI	elastic-apm	1.27.0	GHSA-r562-m862-63w3
PyPI	elastic-apm	1.27.0	PYSEC-2026-634

Affected products (as reported)

Vendor	Product	Versions
Elastic	APM Java Agent	1.10.0 through 1.26.0

Weakness: CWE-269

References

https://discuss.elastic.co/t/apm-java-agent-security-update/289627 x_refsource_MISC