CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2021-34745 — Cisco Appdynamics .Net Agent security vulnerability

High CVSS 7.8

A vulnerability in the AppDynamics .NET Agent for Windows could allow an attacker to leverage an authenticated, local user account to gain SYSTEM privileges. This vulnerability is due to the .NET Agent Coordinator Service executing code with SYSTEM privileges. An attacker with local access to a device that is running the vulnerable agent could create a custom process that would be launched with those SYSTEM privileges. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to execute arbitrary commands on the underlying operating system. This vulnerability is fixed in AppDynamics .NET Agent Release 21.7.

Severity
High
CVSS
7.8 (3.1)
Published
2021-08-18
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
windows/system
Weaknesses
CWE-269

Affected products

  • cisco / appdynamics_.net_agent

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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