Threats / McAfee / CVE-2021-23874
CVE-2021-23874
· EUVD no mirror located
· GCVE no mirror located
Verified 2026-08-04
McAfee Total Protection (MTP) vulnerability
McAfee Total Protection contains an improper privilege management vulnerability allowing local users to gain elevated privileges and execute arbitrary code while bypassing self-defense mechanisms.
Verdict
Today item — known-exploited.
A local privilege escalation vulnerability in McAfee Total Protection enables authenticated users to bypass security controls and achieve code execution with elevated system privileges, undermining endpoint protection integrity.
CISA KEV Yes · 2021-11-035EPSS 0.01026 (verify live)6CVSS 8.23CISA SSVC Exploitation: active · Automatable: no · Impact: total4
01
Is it exploitable?
— the evidence, ranked above the scoreReported exploitation
1 independent public report of in-the-wild exploitation are cataloged.Distinct reporting sources (vendor, incident response, government); open them for the underlying claims.
Exploited in the wild
Listed in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2021-11-03).
Probability (EPSS)
EPSS 0.01026 — modeled likelihood of exploitation activity.EPSS is a daily-changing model output — open the source for today's value.
Severity / affected
CVSS 8.2 (CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:R/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H) · Affected: McAfee, McAfee Total Protection (MTP). Confirm exact fixed builds in the vendor advisory.CVSS — CNA-assigned (CVE.org), version 3.1, set at disclosure.
Weakness (CWE)
Mapped to CWE-269 Improper Privilege Management — weakness family: Authorization / access control.CWE — CNA-assigned (CVE.org); the weakness class drives how the flaw is exploited.
CISA SSVC (triage disposition)
Exploitation: active · Automatable: no · Technical Impact: totalCISA's own stakeholder-specific triage inputs, published in the CVE record (CISA Coordinator role). NOTE: this is CISA's three decision points; the final Act/Attend/Track decision also requires a Mission & Well-being input not published here, so no overall decision is asserted.
Currency of the record
CISA added this to its KEV catalog 266 days after the CVE record was published.KEV lag = CISA-KEV dateAdded − CVE.org datePublished; a floor on how long the known-exploited flaw sat in the public record before the federal catalog listed it. Severity/weakness here is CNA- or CISA-assigned (current at disclosure), independent of NVD's analysis backlog.
02
Who’s exploiting it?
— attribution turns risk into urgencyAttribution not established
No confirmed (advisory-backed) threat-actor attribution is established for this record. Absence of a named actor is not absence of compromise — see Coverage & confidence.
03
Why it matters
— the attack path, told twice: adversary, then board1
Front door — unauthenticated access narrative 1
Attacker
I establish local system access through standard user credentials or physical device access.
Business
Endpoint protection assumes user-level processes cannot compromise core security functions.
2
Keys to the kingdom — privilege/identity takeover narrative 2
Attacker
I exploit the privilege management flaw to escalate my process permissions beyond intended restrictions.
Business
Security software self-defense mechanisms fail to prevent unauthorized privilege elevation.
3
Lateral reach — past segmentation narrative 3
Attacker
I execute arbitrary code with elevated privileges while MTP self-defense remains inactive or bypassed.
Business
Malware or attacker code runs with system-level access, defeating endpoint detection and response capabilities.
04
What to do
— defensible action- Remediate per the vendor advisory — confirm the fixed build for your version and verify exposure.1
Say it to the boardA vulnerability with this evidence profile is a defensible budget line, not a backlog ticket — fund the change against the proof above.
05