SOC status:Duty analyst on shift

UK Cyber Defence
VulnerabilityModified

CVE-2021-42521

There is a NULL pointer dereference vulnerability in VTK before 9.2.5, and it lies in IO/Infovis/vtkXMLTreeReader.cxx.

HIGH 7.5EPSS 1.29%

Does this matter?

High impact if exploited, but EPSS currently rates exploitation as unlikely (1.29%). Schedule it in the normal patch cycle and watch for a rise in EPSS or a public exploit.

Description

There is a NULL pointer dereference vulnerability in VTK before 9.2.5, and it lies in IO/Infovis/vtkXMLTreeReader.cxx. The vendor didn't check the return value of libxml2 API 'xmlDocGetRootElement', and try to dereference it. It is unsafe as the return value can be NULL and that NULL pointer dereference may crash the application.

CVSS 3.1
7.5 HIGHCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
EPSS
1.29% probability · 69th percentile
CISA KEV
Not listed
Weakness
CWE-400, CWE-476
Affected
vtk/vtk
Source
patrick@puiterwijk.org

Source: NVD record, EPSS from FIRST.org, KEV from CISA. Refreshed daily.