Linux Distros Unpatched Vulnerability : CVE-2021-21240

high Nessus Plugin ID 223633

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Synopsis

The Linux/Unix host has one or more packages installed with a vulnerability that the vendor indicates will not be patched.

Description

The Linux/Unix host has one or more packages installed that are impacted by a vulnerability without a vendor supplied patch available.

- httplib2 is a comprehensive HTTP client library for Python. In httplib2 before version 0.19.0, a malicious server which responds with long series of \xa0 characters in the www-authenticate header may cause Denial of Service (CPU burn while parsing header) of the httplib2 client accessing said server. This is fixed in version 0.19.0 which contains a new implementation of auth headers parsing using the pyparsing library. (CVE-2021-21240)

Note that Nessus relies on the presence of the package as reported by the vendor.

Solution

There is no known solution at this time.

Plugin Details

Severity: High

ID: 223633

File Name: unpatched_CVE_2021_21240.nasl

Version: 1.3

Type: local

Agent: unix

Family: Misc.

Published: 3/4/2025

Updated: 9/2/2025

Supported Sensors: Frictionless Assessment AWS, Frictionless Assessment Azure, Frictionless Assessment Agent, Nessus Agent, Agentless Assessment, Nessus

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Medium

Score: 4.4

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 5

Temporal Score: 3.9

Vector: CVSS2#AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2021-21240

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 7.5

Temporal Score: 6.7

Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Temporal Vector: CVSS:3.0/E:P/RL:O/RC:C

Vulnerability Information

CPE: cpe:/o:debian:debian_linux:11.0, cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:16.04:-:lts, cpe:/o:centos:centos:8, cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:22.04:-:lts, cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:8, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:python-httplib2, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:python-httplib2, cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:18.04:-:lts, p-cpe:/a:debian:debian_linux:python-httplib2, cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:14.04:-:lts, p-cpe:/a:centos:centos:python-httplib2, cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:20.04:-:lts

Required KB Items: Host/local_checks_enabled, Host/cpu, global_settings/vendor_unpatched, Host/OS/identifier

Exploit Available: true

Exploit Ease: Exploits are available

Vulnerability Publication Date: 2/8/2021

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2021-21240

Detections

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