Medium severity · published Feb 8, 2021
CVE-2021-21290
Local Information Disclosure Vulnerability in Netty on Unix-Like systems due temporary files
5.5
CVSS
1.8%
EPSS
No
On KEV
Description
Netty is an open-source, asynchronous event-driven network application framework for rapid development of maintainable high performance protocol servers & clients. In Netty before version 4.1.59.Final there is a vulnerability on Unix-like systems involving an insecure temp file. When netty's multipart decoders are used local information disclosure can occur via the local system temporary directory if temporary storing uploads on the disk is enabled. On unix-like systems, the temporary directory is shared between all user. As such, writing to this directory using APIs that do not explicitly set the file/directory permissions can lead to information disclosure. Of note, this does not impact modern MacOS Operating Systems. The method "File.createTempFile" on unix-like systems creates a random file, but, by default will create this file with the permissions "-rw-r--r--". Thus, if sensitive information is written to this file, other local users can read this information. This is the case in netty's "AbstractDiskHttpData" is vulnerable. This has been fixed in version 4.1.59.Final. As a workaround, one may specify your own "java.io.tmpdir" when you start the JVM or use "DefaultHttpDataFactory.setBaseDir(...)" to set the directory to something that is only readable by the current user.
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
Attack vector
Local
Complexity
Low
Privileges
Low
User interaction
None
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
None
Availability
None
Scope
Unchanged
Exploitation
Is it being used?
Exploit prediction (EPSS)1.8% · higher than 78% of CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo evidence yet
CISA KEVNot listed
Ransomware campaign useNot known
Affected products
Which versions
NE
netty · netty
< 4.1.59.Final · source: vendor, NVD
AI
Active IQ Unified Manager · Netapp
All versions, or not specified · source: NVD
BC
Banking Corporate Lending Process Management · Oracle
14.2.0; 14.3.0; 14.5.0 · source: NVD
BC
Banking Credit Facilities Process Management · Oracle
14.2.0; 14.3.0; 14.5.0 · source: NVD
BT
Banking Trade Finance Process Management · Oracle
14.2.0; 14.3.0; 14.5.0 · source: NVD
CS
Cloud Secure Agent · Netapp
All versions, or not specified · source: NVD
CB
Communications Brm - Elastic Charging Engine · Oracle
12.0.0.3 · source: NVD
CD
Communications Design Studio · Oracle
7.4.2 · source: NVD
CM
Communications Messaging Server · Oracle
8.1 · source: NVD
DL
Debian Linux · Debian
9.0; 10.0 · source: NVD
ND
Nosql Database · Oracle
before 20.3 · source: NVD
QU
Quarkus · Quarkus
through 1.13.7 · source: NVD
References
NVD
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2021-21290
CVE.org
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2021-21290
Patch
https://github.com/netty/netty/commit/c735357bf29d07856ad171c6611a2e1a0e0000ec
Exploit
https://github.com/netty/netty/security/advisories/GHSA-5mcr-gq6c-3hq2
lists.apache.org
https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/r0053443ce19ff125981559f8c51cf66e3ab4350f47812b8cf0733a05%40%3Cdev.kafka.apache.org%3E
lists.apache.org
https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/r02e467123d45006a1dda20a38349e9c74c3a4b53e2e07be0939ecb3f%40%3Cdev.ranger.apache.org%3E
lists.apache.org
https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/r0857b613604c696bf9743f0af047360baaded48b1c75cf6945a083c5%40%3Cjira.kafka.apache.org%3E
lists.apache.org
https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/r10308b625e49d4e9491d7e079606ca0df2f0a4d828f1ad1da64ba47b%40%3Cjira.kafka.apache.org%3E
More from netty
7.5
CVE-2023-44487
HTTP/2 Rapid Reset Attack Vulnerability
10.0
CVE-2026-47691
Netty has Insufficient Bailiwick Validation for NS Records
10.0
CVE-2026-45674
Netty Vulnerable to DNS Cache Poisoning via Missing Bailiwick Checks in CNAME Records
9.8
CVE-2026-56817
Netty: XML External Entity (XXE) injection via unconfigured XML factory when DTD and entity processing are enabled
9.8
CVE-2026-42581
Netty: HTTP/1.0 TE+CL Coexistence Bypasses Smuggling Sanitization
