A flaw was found in samba. The Samba smbd file server must map Windows group identities (SIDs) into unix group ids (gids). The code that performs this had a flaw that could allow it to read data beyond the end of the array in the case where a negative cache entry had been added to the mapping cache. This could cause the calling code to return those values into the process token that stores the group membership for a user. The highest threat from this vulnerability is to data confidentiality and integrity.
CVE-2021-20254
This medium-severity CVE scores 6.8 under NVD CVSS v3. EPSS exploit probability: 1.6%, top 27% of all CVEs by exploit prediction. GitHub Security Advisory data not yet ingested — confidence will rise once GHSA publishes (typical lag: hours to days for open-source ecosystem CVEs; never for infrastructure-only CVEs).
- Lower severity and no public exploit yet
A fix is available — apply it.
- CVSS v3
- 6.8
- EG Score
- 6.8(medium)
- EG Risk
- 36(Track)EG Risk 36/100SSVC: 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 computedSeverity68% × 45%Exploitation2% × 40%Automatability30% × 15%Action: Routine — remediate on your standard cadence. - EPSS
- 73.5%
- KEV
- Not listed
Published
May 5, 2021
Last Modified
November 21, 2024
References (14)
- secalert@redhathttps://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1949442
- secalert@redhathttps://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2021/05/msg00023.html
- secalert@redhathttps://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/3EP2VJ73OVBPVSOSTVOMGIEQA3MWF6F7/
- secalert@redhathttps://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/ZAF6L2M6CNAJ2YYYGXPWETTW5YLCWTVT/
- secalert@redhathttps://security.gentoo.org/glsa/202105-22
- secalert@redhathttps://security.netapp.com/advisory/ntap-20210430-0001/
- secalert@redhathttps://www.samba.org/samba/security/CVE-2021-20254.html
- af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1949442
- af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2021/05/msg00023.html
- af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/3EP2VJ73OVBPVSOSTVOMGIEQA3MWF6F7/
- af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/ZAF6L2M6CNAJ2YYYGXPWETTW5YLCWTVT/
- af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/202105-22
- af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108https://security.netapp.com/advisory/ntap-20210430-0001/
- af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108https://www.samba.org/samba/security/CVE-2021-20254.html
Vendor Advisories for CVE-2021-20254(3)
These vendors published their own advisory mentioning this CVE — often with vendor-specific remediation steps + affected product lists not in NVD.
Patch Availability(8)
| Vendor / Ecosystem | Fixed in / Patch | Released | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| ubuntu | winbind (2:4.7.6+dfsg~ubuntu-0ubuntu2.23) @ bionic | 2026-05-26 | ubuntu |
| ubuntu | winbind (2:4.3.11+dfsg-0ubuntu0.14.04.20+esm11) @ trusty | 2026-05-26 | ubuntu |
| redhat | samba-0:4.11.2-15.el8_2 | 2021-11-30 | redhat |
| redhat | samba-0:4.13.3-5.el8_4 | 2021-11-02 | redhat |
| redhat | samba-0:4.9.1-11.el7_7 | 2021-10-26 | redhat |
| redhat | samba-0:4.14.5-201.el8rhgs | 2021-10-05 | redhat |
| redhat | samba-0:4.11.6-112.el7rhgs | 2021-10-05 | redhat |
| redhat | samba-0:4.10.16-15.el7_9 | 2021-06-08 | 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
(6)
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-2021-202542024-10-15
A flaw was found in samba. The Samba smbd file server must map Windows group identities (SIDs) into unix group ids (gids). The code that performs this had a flaw that could allow it to read data beyond the end of the array in the case where a negative cache entry had been added to the mapping cache. This could cause the calling code to return those values into the process token that stores the group membership for a user. The highest threat from this vulnerability is to data confidentiality and integrity.
- Red HatRHSA-2021:2313MODERATE2021-04-29
RHSA-2021:2313 — Moderate
- Red HatRHSA-2021:3723MODERATE2021-04-29
RHSA-2021:3723 — Moderate
- Red HatRHSA-2021:3724MODERATE2021-04-29
RHSA-2021:3724 — Moderate
- UbuntuUSN-4930-1MEDIUM
Samba vulnerability
- UbuntuUSN-4931-1MEDIUM
Samba vulnerabilities
Data Freshness Timeline
(refreshed 12× in last 7d / 45× 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.
- 2026-07-24 14:15 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-07-23 14:15 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-07-23 01:56 UTCEG score recompute
- 2026-07-22 22:43 UTCEG score recompute
- 2026-07-22 14:05 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-07-21 15:22 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-07-21 15:22 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-07-20 17:04 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-07-19 14:28 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-07-19 02:26 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-07-18 21:29 UTCOSV refresh
- 2026-07-18 10:02 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-07-16 17:00 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-07-15 16:55 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-07-15 16:55 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-07-15 01:57 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-07-13 22:27 UTCEPSS rescore
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- 2026-07-11 08:25 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-07-09 19:07 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-07-08 15:12 UTCEPSS rescore
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- 2026-07-07 13:43 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-07-06 16:25 UTCEPSS rescore
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- 2026-07-05 02:28 UTCEPSS rescore
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- 2026-07-04 06:29 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-07-04 06:29 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-07-02 16:57 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-07-01 15:03 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-07-01 04:18 UTCOSV refresh
- 2026-06-30 23:20 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-06-30 23:20 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-06-28 14:05 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-06-28 04:54 UTCEPSS rescore
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- 2026-06-25 13:48 UTCEPSS rescore
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- 2026-06-23 21:31 UTCEPSS rescore
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- 2026-06-21 14:54 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-06-21 14:54 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-06-21 01:58 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-06-21 01:57 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-06-19 19:24 UTCEPSS rescore
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- 2026-06-18 17:51 UTCEPSS rescore
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- 2026-06-16 17:50 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-06-15 17:46 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-06-14 23:15 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-06-13 22:58 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-06-13 07:13 UTCOSV refresh
- 2026-06-12 23:10 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-06-12 23:10 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-06-11 13:58 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-06-10 22:16 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-06-10 22:16 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-06-10 13:20 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-06-08 14:15 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-06-08 14:15 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-06-07 15:23 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-06-07 15:23 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-06-05 22:45 UTCEPSS rescore
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- 2026-06-05 06:09 UTCEPSS rescore
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- 2026-06-05 06:08 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-06-04 13:10 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-06-02 20:11 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-06-02 20:11 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-06-01 13:50 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-06-01 13:50 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-05-31 22:29 UTCEPSS rescore
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- 2026-05-31 00:15 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-05-31 00:15 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-05-29 13:42 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-05-28 13:43 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-05-28 13:43 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-05-27 13:39 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-05-26 17:09 UTCEG score recompute
- 2026-05-26 17:09 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-05-26 17:08 UTCGHSA enrichment
- 2026-05-26 13:42 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-05-26 13:42 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-05-26 07:17 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-05-26 07:17 UTCEPSS rescore
- 2026-05-24 16:49 UTCEPSS rescore
Related CVEs(same vendor + same CWE)
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Same CWE
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- CVE-2016-10749EG 9.8CRITICAL
- CVE-1999-0006EG 9.8EPSS 96%CRITICAL
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- CVE-2014-1508EG 9.1EPSS 90%CRITICAL
- CVE-2016-5198NVD 8.8EG 9.0 KEVEPSS 98%HIGH
- CVE-2016-4523NVD 7.5EG 9.0 KEVEPSS 98%HIGH
Frequently asked(5)
What is CVE-2021-20254?
When was CVE-2021-20254 disclosed?
Is CVE-2021-20254 actively exploited?
What is the CVSS score of CVE-2021-20254?
How do I remediate CVE-2021-20254?
Dependency Blast Radius
Explore the affected products and dependency analysis for CVE-2021-20254
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