CVE intelligence and bounded remediation
CVE-2021-23885 — Mcafee Web Gateway security vulnerability
Privilege escalation vulnerability in McAfee Web Gateway (MWG) prior to 9.2.8 allows an authenticated user to gain elevated privileges through the User Interface and execute commands on the appliance via incorrect improper neutralization of user input in the troubleshooting page.
- Severity
- Critical
- CVSS
- 9 (3.1)
- Published
- 2021-02-17
- CISA KEV
- Not currently listed
- Ecosystem
- software/application
- Weaknesses
- CWE-269
Affected products
- mcafee / web_gateway
Showing 1 representative product identities from 3 source matches. Confirm exact affected versions with the linked vendor and NVD evidence.
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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