CVE-2021-32798 | Failure to Sanitize Special Elements into a Different Plane (Special Element Injection) in notebook

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The Jupyter notebook is a web-based notebook environment for interactive computing. In affected versions untrusted notebook can execute code on load. Jupyter Notebook uses a deprecated version of Google Caja to sanitize user inputs. A public Caja bypass can be used to trigger an XSS when a victim opens a malicious ipynb document in Jupyter Notebook. The XSS allows an attacker to execute arbitrary code on the victim computer using Jupyter APIs.

Published: 2021-08-09 Last update: 2024-11-21 Assigner: [email protected] Source: [email protected]
NVD Status：Modified，CVE State: published
View at NVD, CVE.org, EUVD

CVE-2021-32798 is rated High Exploit Risk (70.2/100): CVSS Critical severity, with low exploitation likelihood (EPSS 0.23%). 1 public exploit reference(s) are indexed (Exploit-DB). 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-2021-32798

EDB-ID Source Kind Published Link
— nvd_ref exploit_tag Exploit-DB ↗

Exploit prediction scoring system (EPSS) score for CVE-2021-32798

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 0.82% 0.23% -0.60%
2 2025-11-18 0.23% 0.82% +0.60%
3 2025-10-01 — 0.23% —

Full EPSS history (14 records total)

Common vulnerability scoring system (CVSS) metrics for CVE-2021-32798

CVSS metrics for this CVE.

Base score Version Severity Vector Exploitability Impact Score source
10.0 3.1 CRITICAL
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/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:C)
Breaking this can reach past the original component and bite other resources—bigger blast radius.
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:N)
Service keeps running; no real outage angle.
 3.9 5.8 [email protected]
9.6 3.1 CRITICAL
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H 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:R)
A real person has to do something—click, install, enable—otherwise it doesn’t land.
Scope (S:C)
Breaking this can reach past the original component and bite other resources—bigger blast radius.
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.
 2.8 6.0 [email protected]
6.8 2.0 MEDIUM
AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P Click to expand
Access vector (AV:N)
Can be exploited remotely over network reachability.
Access complexity (AC:M)
Exploitation needs some favorable conditions, but not exceptional ones.
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.
 8.6 6.4 [email protected]

Weakness enumeration for CVE-2021-32798

GitHub Security Advisory for CVE-2021-32798

GHSA-hwvq-6gjx-j797 · Severity: high · Ecosystem: pip — Special Element Injection in notebook

OS Trackers for CVE-2021-32798

vendor priority summary link
debian not yet assigned CVE-2021-32798 not yet assigned priority: Debian including 1 source packages (jupyter-notebook), 5 status rows across 5 suites (bookworm, bullseye, forky, sid, trixie): resolved 4, open 1. https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2021-32798
ubuntu medium CVE-2021-32798 medium priority: Ubuntu including 1 source packages (jupyter-notebook), 15 status rows across 15 suites (bionic, focal, hirsute, impish, jammy, kinetic, lunar, mantic, noble, oracular, plucky, questing, trusty, upstream, xenial): not-affected 8, ignored 3, needs-triage 3, DNE 1. https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2021-32798

Affected software / configurations for CVE-2021-32798

Vendor Product Version Raw CPE
jupyter notebook >= 5.7.0, < 5.7.11 cpe:2.3:a:jupyter:notebook:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
jupyter notebook 6.4.0 cpe:2.3:a:jupyter:notebook:6.4.0:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

References for CVE-2021-32798

cvelogic Threat Intelligence