CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2021-3521 — There is a flaw in RPM's signature functionality

Medium CVSS 4.7

There is a flaw in RPM's signature functionality. OpenPGP subkeys are associated with a primary key via a "binding signature." RPM does not check the binding signature of subkeys prior to importing them. If an attacker is able to add or socially engineer another party to add a malicious subkey to a legitimate public key, RPM could wrongly trust a malicious signature. The greatest impact of this flaw is to data integrity. To exploit this flaw, an attacker must either compromise an RPM repository or convince an administrator to install an untrusted RPM or public key. It is strongly recommended to only use RPMs and public keys from trusted sources.

Severity
Medium
CVSS
4.7 (3.1)
Published
2022-08-22
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
software/application
Weaknesses
CWE-347

Affected products

  • rpm / rpm

Matched remediation archetype

General vulnerability remediation

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Check exposure

  • Confirm the affected component, deployment paths, reachable interfaces, and enabled features from inventories and configuration, without probing production destructively.
  • Compare the advisory's affected conditions with the repository lockfiles, build manifests, artifacts, and runtime inventory.
  • Identify data sensitivity, trust boundaries, and privilege level for every confirmed affected deployment.

Remediate safely

  • Apply a vendor-supported fix or remove the affected component or feature; record the selected change and its source in the repository.
  • Update direct and transitive dependency locks, generated artifacts, deployment manifests, and asset inventories together.
  • Add a regression test for the documented unsafe condition using inert inputs and preserve rollback instructions.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

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