CVE-2021-3042

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    CVE-2021-3042

    Published: 15 Jul 2021Last Modified: 12 Feb 2026

    Summary:

    Details: A local privilege escalation (PE) vulnerability exists in the Palo Alto Networks Cortex XDR agent on Windows platforms that enables an authenticated local Windows user to execute programs with SYSTEM privileges. Exploiting this vulnerability requires the user to have file creation privilege in the Windows root directory (such as C:\). This issue impacts: All versions of Cortex XDR agent 6.1 without content update 181 or a later version; All versions of Cortex XDR agent 7.2 without content update 181 or a later version; All versions of Cortex XDR agent 7.3 without content update 181 or a later version. Cortex XDR agent 5.0 versions are not impacted by this issue. Content updates are required to resolve this issue and are automatically applied for the agent.

    References: https://security.paloaltonetworks.com/CVE-2021-3042

    Affected packages

    Package

    Name:

    Purl:

    Affected ranges

    Type: GIT

    Events:

    Introduced- 0
    Fixed -None

    Affected versions

    v2.0

    Common Vulnerability Scoring System

    Attack Vector
    Network
    Adjacent
    Local
    Physical
    Privileges Required
    None
    Low
    High
    User Interaction
    None
    Required
    Scope
    Unchanged
    Changed
    Confidentiality
    None
    Low
    High
    Integrity
    None
    Low
    High
    Availability
    None
    Low
    High
    CVE-2021-3042 | CVE-DB