CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2021-21364 — Smartbear Swagger-Codegen security vulnerability

Medium CVSS 5.5

swagger-codegen is an open-source project which contains a template-driven engine to generate documentation, API clients and server stubs in different languages by parsing your OpenAPI / Swagger definition. In swagger-codegen before version 2.4.19, on Unix-Like systems, the system temporary directory is shared between all local users. When files/directories are created, the default `umask` settings for the process are respected. As a result, by default, most processes/apis will create files/directories with the permissions `-rw-r--r--` and `drwxr-xr-x` respectively, unless an API that explicitly sets safe file permissions is used. Because this vulnerability impacts generated code, the generated code will remain vulnerable until fixed manually! This vulnerability is fixed in version 2.4.19. Note this is a distinct vulnerability from CVE-2021-21363.

Severity
Medium
CVSS
5.5 (3.1)
Published
2021-03-11
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
software/application
Weaknesses
CWE-200, CWE-378, CWE-732

Affected products

  • smartbear / swagger-codegen

Matched remediation archetype

Privilege escalation and unsafe privilege management

This catalog composition supplies bounded fallback guidance. Explicitly reviewed curated workflows load with the complete record below.

Check exposure

  • Map service accounts, operating-system identities, roles, capabilities, impersonation, set-user transitions, and administrative helper paths.
  • Determine whether untrusted users or lower-privilege processes can reach the affected transition or modify inputs it trusts.
  • Review file, socket, registry, device, job, container, and cloud-role permissions used before and after privilege changes.

Remediate safely

  • Apply the supported fix and redesign privileged operations as a minimal, authenticated, allowlisted interface.
  • Drop privileges before processing untrusted input, verify the drop succeeds, and remove unnecessary roles, capabilities, and write permissions.
  • Validate ownership and permissions at time of use and add explicit lower-to-higher privilege boundary tests.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

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