CVE-2021-28648

Trend Micro Antivirus for Mac 2020 v10.5 and 2021 v11 (Consumer) is vulnerable to an improper access control privilege escalation vulnerability that could allow an attacker to establish a connection that could lead to full local privilege escalation within the application. Please note that an attacker must first obtain the ability to execute low-privileged code on the target system to exploit this vulnerability.

Published: 2021-04-22 Last update: 2024-11-21 Assigner: [email protected] Source: [email protected]
NVD Status：Modified，CVE State: published
View at NVD, CVE.org, EUVD

CVE-2021-28648 is rated Low Risk (38.5/100): CVSS High severity, with low exploitation likelihood (EPSS 0.08%). Monitor for updates and reassess as exploit intelligence or EPSS changes.

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

Exploit prediction scoring system (EPSS) score for CVE-2021-28648

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 2025-03-17 0.04% 0.08% +0.03%
2 2023-03-07 0.89% 0.04% -0.84%
3 2022-04-01 — 0.89% —

Full EPSS history (6 records total)

Common vulnerability scoring system (CVSS) metrics for CVE-2021-28648

CVSS metrics for this CVE.

Base score Version Severity Vector Exploitability Impact Score source
7.8 3.1 HIGH
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H Click to expand
Attack vector (AV:L)
They already need access on the box, or another person has to do something wrong; it’s not a remote drive-by.
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:L)
A normal user session is enough; they don’t have to be admin.
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:H)
They could widely tamper with or forge data—trust in the data is badly hurt.
Availability (A:H)
Could take the service down hard or make it unusable for people who depend on it.
 1.8 5.9 [email protected]
4.6 2.0 MEDIUM
AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P Click to expand
Access vector (AV:L)
Requires local access to the target system.
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:P)
Partial integrity impact.
Availability impact (A:P)
Partial availability impact.
 3.9 6.4 [email protected]

Weakness enumeration for CVE-2021-28648

Affected software / configurations for CVE-2021-28648

Vendor Product Version Raw CPE
trendmicro antivirus >= 10.5, < 10.5.2088 cpe:2.3:a:trendmicro:antivirus:*:*:*:*:*:macos:*:*
trendmicro antivirus >= 11.0, < 11.0.2062 cpe:2.3:a:trendmicro:antivirus:*:*:*:*:*:macos:*:*

References for CVE-2021-28648

cvelogic Threat Intelligence