CVE-2021-22146

Exp

All versions of Elastic Cloud Enterprise has the Elasticsearch “anonymous” user enabled by default in deployed clusters. While in the default setting the anonymous user has no permissions and is unable to successfully query any Elasticsearch APIs, an attacker could leverage the anonymous user to gain insight into certain details of a deployed cluster.

Published: 2021-07-21 Last update: 2024-11-21 Assigner: [email protected] Source: [email protected]

Conclusion & alert: CVE-2021-22146 is rated High Exploit Risk (75.1/100): CVSS High severity, with high exploitation likelihood (EPSS 29.90%, 96th percentile). Core evidence: 2 public exploit reference(s) are indexed (Exploit-DB). Mandatory action: Public exploits are available—assess exposure, apply mitigations, and prioritize patching.

Risk is dynamic; we continuously reassess and refresh what is shown on this page as upstream context changes.

Public exploit references (Exploit-DB) for CVE-2021-22146

EDB-ID Source Kind Published Link
50152 exploit_db edb 2021-07-26 Exploit-DB ↗
nvd_ref exploit_tag Exploit-DB ↗

Exploit prediction scoring system (EPSS) score for CVE-2021-22146

EPSS lead: Daily EPSS estimates relative likelihood of exploitation; percentile ranks this CVE among scored vulnerabilities (higher = more severe relative rank).

# Date Old EPSS score New EPSS score Delta (New - Old)
1 2025-11-21 33.56% 29.90% -3.66%
2 2025-11-18 29.90% 33.56% +3.66%
3 2025-03-30 29.90%

Full EPSS history (31 records total)

Common vulnerability scoring system (CVSS) metrics for CVE-2021-22146

CVSS metrics for this CVE.

Base score Version Severity Vector Exploitability Impact Score source
7.5 3.1 HIGH
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N Click to expand
Attack vector (AV:N)
Could be attacked over the internet or any normal routed network—not just someone sitting at the machine.
Attack complexity (AC:L)
Once they can reach the bug, pulling it off is straightforward—no weird race conditions or rare setup.
Privileges required (PR:N)
No account or special rights needed—anonymous or random user is enough.
User interaction (UI:N)
Nobody has to click “OK” or open a trap file; it can work without a victim helping.
Scope (S:U)
Damage stays in the same “trust bubble” as the broken component—no big spill into unrelated systems.
Confidentiality (C:H)
Serious risk that confidential data gets exposed in a big way.
Integrity (I:N)
Data isn’t meaningfully altered or forged.
Availability (A:N)
Service keeps running; no real outage angle.
3.9 3.6 [email protected]
5.0 2.0 MEDIUM
AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:N/A:N Click to expand
Access vector (AV:N)
Can be exploited remotely over network reachability.
Access complexity (AC:L)
Exploitation conditions are straightforward and predictable.
Authentication (AU:N)
No authentication is required.
Confidentiality impact (C:P)
Partial confidentiality impact.
Integrity impact (I:N)
No integrity impact.
Availability impact (A:N)
No availability impact.
10.0 2.9 [email protected]

Weakness enumeration for CVE-2021-22146

Affected software / configurations for CVE-2021-22146

Vendor Product Version Raw CPE
elastic elasticsearch 7.13.3 cpe:2.3:a:elastic:elasticsearch:7.13.3:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

References for CVE-2021-22146

cvelogic Threat Intelligence