CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2021-43997 — Amazon Freertos security vulnerability

High CVSS 7.8

FreeRTOS versions 10.2.0 through 10.4.5 do not prevent non-kernel code from calling the xPortRaisePrivilege internal function to raise privilege. FreeRTOS versions through 10.4.6 do not prevent a third party that has already independently gained the ability to execute injected code to achieve further privilege escalation by branching directly inside a FreeRTOS MPU API wrapper function with a manually crafted stack frame. These issues affect ARMv7-M MPU ports, and ARMv8-M ports with MPU support enabled (i.e. configENABLE_MPU set to 1). These are fixed in V10.5.0 and in V10.4.3-LTS Patch 3.

Severity
High
CVSS
7.8 (3.1)
Published
2021-11-17
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
operating-system

Affected products

  • amazon / freertos
  • amazon / freertos / 10.4.3

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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