CVE intelligence and bounded remediation
CVE-2021-23878 — Mcafee Endpoint Security security vulnerability
Clear text storage of sensitive Information in memory vulnerability in McAfee Endpoint Security (ENS) for Windows prior to 10.7.0 February 2021 Update allows a local user to view ENS settings and credentials via accessing process memory after the ENS administrator has performed specific actions. To exploit this, the local user has to access the relevant memory location immediately after an ENS administrator has made a configuration change through the console on their machine
- Severity
- High
- CVSS
- 7.3 (3.1)
- Published
- 2021-02-10
- CISA KEV
- Not currently listed
- Ecosystem
- windows/system
- Weaknesses
- CWE-312
Affected products
- mcafee / endpoint_security
Matched remediation archetype
Information disclosure and sensitive data exposure
This catalog composition supplies bounded fallback guidance. Explicitly reviewed curated workflows load with the complete record below.
Check exposure
- Trace sensitive data through responses, errors, logs, metrics, traces, caches, exports, files, backups, and client bundles.
- Identify affected subjects, tenants, retention windows, access controls, and downstream copies without opening unnecessary sensitive records.
- Review metadata, timing, status, length, and existence signals as well as direct content disclosure.
Remediate safely
- Minimize collection and output, apply field-level authorization and redaction at a centralized boundary, and return generic external errors.
- Remove secrets and sensitive data from logs, artifacts, URLs, caches, and client-side bundles; rotate credentials that may have been exposed.
- Update the affected component and add synthetic-data tests for response, error, observability, and export paths.
Authoritative sources
Complete CVE record and remediation plan
The detailed catalog view below loads this exact record, its source evidence, and the full seven-phase agentic change plan.