A flaw was found in glibc. An off-by-one buffer overflow and underflow in getcwd() may lead to memory corruption when the size of the buffer is exactly 1. A local attacker who can control the input buffer and size passed to getcwd() in a setuid program could use this flaw to potentially execute arbitrary code and escalate their privileges on the system.
CVE-2021-3999
Score 7.8 from GitHub Security Advisory (severity: HIGH) published 2022-08-25. NVD baseline CVSS 7.8; sources differ by 0.0.
- High severity, but no confirmed exploitation yet
A fix is available — apply it.
- CVSS v3
- 7.8
- EG Score
- 7.8(medium)
- EG Risk
- 35(Track)EG Risk 35/100SSVC: Track
EG Risk is EchelonGraph's 0–100 priority score: it fuses intrinsic severity with real-world exploitation and automatability so you can rank equal-severity CVEs and fix the most dangerous first. Higher = act sooner. Distinct from the 0–10 EG Score (severity).
How it’s computedSeverity78% × 45%Exploitation1% × 40%Automatability0% × 15%Action: Routine — remediate on your standard cadence. - EPSS
- 50.1%
- KEV
- Not listed
Published
August 24, 2022
Last Modified
December 2, 2025
References (16)
- secalert@redhathttps://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2021-3999
- secalert@redhathttps://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2024637
- secalert@redhathttps://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2022/10/msg00021.html
- secalert@redhathttps://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2021-3999
- secalert@redhathttps://security.netapp.com/advisory/ntap-20221104-0001/
- secalert@redhathttps://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=28769
- secalert@redhathttps://sourceware.org/git/gitweb.cgi?p=glibc.git%3Bh=23e0e8f5f1fb5ed150253d986ecccdc90c2dcd5e
- secalert@redhathttps://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2022/01/24/4
- af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2021-3999
- af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2024637
- af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2022/10/msg00021.html
- af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2021-3999
- af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108https://security.netapp.com/advisory/ntap-20221104-0001/
- af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=28769
- af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108https://sourceware.org/git/gitweb.cgi?p=glibc.git%3Bh=23e0e8f5f1fb5ed150253d986ecccdc90c2dcd5e
Vendor Advisories for CVE-2021-3999(1)
These vendors published their own advisory mentioning this CVE — often with vendor-specific remediation steps + affected product lists not in NVD.
Patch Availability(4)
| Vendor / Ecosystem | Fixed in / Patch | Released | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| ubuntu | locales (2.23-0ubuntu11.3+esm1) @ xenial | 2026-05-25 | ubuntu |
| ubuntu | nscd (2.23-0ubuntu11.3+esm6) @ xenial | 2026-05-25 | ubuntu |
| ubuntu | libc6-prof (2.31-0ubuntu9.7) @ focal | 2026-05-25 | ubuntu |
| redhat | glibc-0:2.28-164.el8_5.3 | 2022-03-15 | redhat |
Patches are aggregated from vendor advisories (Red Hat, Microsoft, Cisco, GitHub) and package ecosystems (OSV, GHSA). Multiple rows for the same upstream release have been deduplicated.
Weakness Classification(1)
MITRE Common Weakness Enumeration — the root-cause categories this CVE belongs to.
Additional Vendor Advisories
(4)
Vendors that published advisories for this CVE beyond the curated set above. Broader coverage but minimal per-row detail — click through for the original advisory.
- Microsoft MSRCCVE-2021-39992022-08-31
A flaw was found in glibc. An off-by-one buffer overflow and underflow in getcwd() may lead to memory corruption when the size of the buffer is exactly 1. A local attacker who can control the input buffer and size passed to getcwd() in a setuid program could use this flaw to potentially execute arbitrary code and escalate their privileges on the system.
- UbuntuUSN-5310-1MEDIUM
GNU C Library vulnerabilities
- UbuntuUSN-5310-2MEDIUM
GNU C Library vulnerabilities
- UbuntuUSN-6762-1MEDIUM
GNU C Library vulnerabilities
Data Freshness Timeline
(refreshed 13× in last 7d / 51× in last 30d)
Each row is a source pipeline that fetched or updated this CVE on that date, with what changed. For example, "NVD update" means NVD published or revised its analysis for this CVE; "MITRE cvelistV5" means we ingested or refreshed it from the CNA feed. Most recent first.
Showing the most recent 100 of 108 total refreshes for this CVE.
- 2026-07-23 02:04 UTCEG score recompute
- 2026-07-22 22:50 UTCEG score recompute
- 2026-07-22 14:06 UTCEPSS rescore
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Related CVEs(same vendor + same CWE)
Same vendor
10 shownmsrc · redhat
Same CWE
10 shownCWE-193
Frequently asked(5)
What is CVE-2021-3999?
When was CVE-2021-3999 disclosed?
Is CVE-2021-3999 actively exploited?
What is the CVSS score of CVE-2021-3999?
How do I remediate CVE-2021-3999?
Dependency Blast Radius
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