CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2021-22997 — F5 Big-Iq Centralized Management security vulnerability

High CVSS 7.5

On all 7.x and 6.x versions (fixed in 8.0.0), BIG-IQ HA ElasticSearch service does not implement any form of authentication for the clustering transport services, and all data used by ElasticSearch for transport is unencrypted. Note: Software versions which have reached End of Software Development (EoSD) are not evaluated.

Severity
High
CVSS
7.5 (3.1)
Published
2021-03-31
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
software/application
Weaknesses
CWE-306

Affected products

  • f5 / big-iq_centralized_management

Matched remediation archetype

Authentication bypass and missing authentication

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Check exposure

  • Map every affected endpoint and protocol path, including alternate ports, legacy routes, recovery flows, service accounts, and machine-to-machine access.
  • Confirm which deployments enable the affected authentication mode and whether the interface is reachable from untrusted networks.
  • Review session, token, credential, and proxy trust configuration without attempting account takeover.

Remediate safely

  • Apply the supported fix and centralize fail-closed authentication before protected request handling.
  • Remove default or embedded credentials, rotate affected secrets and sessions, and bind authentication decisions to the intended audience and channel.
  • Add negative tests for alternate routes, malformed or absent credentials, recovery flows, and proxy-derived identity.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

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