CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2021-34788 — Cisco Anyconnect Secure Mobility Client security vulnerability

High CVSS 7

A vulnerability in the shared library loading mechanism of Cisco AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client for Linux and Mac OS could allow an authenticated, local attacker to perform a shared library hijacking attack on an affected device if the VPN Posture (HostScan) Module is installed on the AnyConnect client. This vulnerability is due to a race condition in the signature verification process for shared library files that are loaded on an affected device. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a series of crafted interprocess communication (IPC) messages to the AnyConnect process. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to execute arbitrary code on the affected device with root privileges. To exploit this vulnerability, the attacker must have a valid account on the system.

Severity
High
CVSS
7 (3.1)
Published
2021-10-06
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
software/application
Weaknesses
CWE-367

Affected products

  • cisco / anyconnect_secure_mobility_client

Matched remediation archetype

Race condition, TOCTOU, and lifecycle synchronization

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Check exposure

  • Map concurrent actors, shared state, lock boundaries, signals, callbacks, retries, and check-then-use sequences in the affected path.
  • Determine whether untrusted users can influence timing, object names, filesystem state, or repeated state transitions.
  • Identify clustered and multi-process behavior that repository-local tests may not represent.

Remediate safely

  • Make the sensitive state transition atomic or protect it with a consistently ordered synchronization primitive.
  • Perform authorization and invariant checks on the same authoritative object and transaction used for the operation.
  • Use unique private resources, safe ownership transfer, and idempotent operations; add deterministic concurrency regression tests.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

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