Palo Alto Networks this week announced the availability of patches for security flaws in the Prisma Cloud Compute cloud workload protection solution and Windows agent for the Cortex XDR detection and response platform.
The most serious of the bugs — CVE-2021-3042 — is a local privilege escalation (PE) issue in the Palo Alto Networks Cortex XDR agent on Windows platforms. The flaw carries a CVSS score of 7.8.
According to Palo Alto Networks, the issue could be exploited by authenticated attackers with local access that have file creation privilege in the Windows root directory. Successful exploitation could lead to the attacker executing programs with SYSTEM privileges.
The bug was found to affect all Cortex XDR agent versions 6.1, 7.2, and 7.3 that do not have content update 181 or later. Mitigation steps include preventing users from creating files in the Windows root directory.
The second vulnerability — CVE-2021-3043 (CVSS score of 7.5) — is a reflected cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability that affects the Prisma Cloud Compute web console.
A remote attacker able to exploit this vulnerability could execute arbitrary JavaScript code in the browser-based web console. However, the vulnerability is only exploitable while an authenticated administrator is using that web interface.
The security flaw impacts Prisma Cloud Compute 20.12 and 21.04 versions prior to releases 20.12.552 and 21.04.439, respectively. The fixes were automatically applied to Prisma Cloud Compute SaaS installations.
Palo Alto Networks said it was not aware of either these security issues being maliciously exploited.
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