CVE-2021-21017
Actively exploited. CVE-2021-21017 is listed in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2021-11-03) — exploitation has been observed in the wild, and US federal agencies are required to remediate it under BOD 22-01. Treat patching as urgent.
Public exploit code is available. Proof-of-concept or working exploit code for CVE-2021-21017 is indexed in GitHub PoC. Expect opportunistic scanning and exploitation attempts — prioritize remediation.
Acrobat Acrobat and Reader contain a heap-based buffer overflow vulnerability that could allow an unauthenticated attacker to achieve code execution in the context of the current user.
CSIRTS triage
- What
- Acrobat and Reader contain a heap-based buffer overflow vulnerability that could allow an unauthenticated attacker to achieve code execution.
- Who is affected
- Users of Adobe Acrobat and Reader are affected.
- Urgency
- Remediation is urgent due to the critical nature of the vulnerability and its exploitation status.
- Action
- Users should update to the latest version of Acrobat and Reader.
AI-assisted analysis generated from the source advisory — verify against the original.
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Exploitation outlook
- Exploitation confirmedAlready exploited in the wild (CISA KEV) — the prediction phase is over. Patch now. Riskier than 100% of all EPSS-scored CVEs.
Exploit availability
Public exploit or proof-of-concept code for CVE-2021-21017 is indexed in these free datasets. Available exploit code raises real-world risk independent of the CVSS score.
- GitHub PoCPublic proof-of-concept repositories on GitHub reference this CVE.look it up ↗
Advisory coverage (1)
- criticalexploitedCVE-2021-21017: Adobe Acrobat and Reader Heap-based Buffer Overflow Vulnerabilitycisa-kev · 2021-11-03
External references
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[](https://www.csirts.com/cve/CVE-2021-21017)