Threats / Microsoft / CVE-2021-38649
CVE-2021-38649
· EUVD no mirror located
· GCVE no mirror located
Verified 2026-08-04
Microsoft Open Management Infrastructure (OMI) vulnerability
Microsoft Open Management Infrastructure (OMI) contains an unspecified privilege escalation vulnerability affecting Azure VM Management Extensions. The flaw has been exploited in the wild.
Verdict
Today item — known-exploited.
An unauthenticated or local attacker can escalate privileges on affected Azure virtual machines through OMI, potentially gaining administrative control of the system and its managed resources.
CISA KEV Yes · 2021-11-035EPSS 0.01983 (verify live)6CVSS 73CISA SSVC Exploitation: active · Automatable: no · Impact: total4
01
Is it exploitable?
— the evidence, ranked above the scoreReported exploitation
2 independent public reports 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 0.01983 — modeled likelihood of exploitation activity.EPSS is a daily-changing model output — open the source for today's value.
Severity / affected
CVSS 7 (CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H/E:U/RL:O/RC:C) · Affected: Microsoft, Open Management Infrastructure (OMI). Confirm exact fixed builds in the vendor advisory.CVSS — CNA-assigned (CVE.org), version 3.1, set at disclosure.
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 49 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 identify and target Azure VMs running vulnerable OMI versions through network reconnaissance or direct access.
Business
Attackers gain a foothold into cloud infrastructure, increasing exposure of sensitive data and workloads hosted on Azure.
2
Keys to the kingdom — privilege/identity takeover narrative 2
Attacker
I exploit the privilege escalation flaw in OMI to elevate my access from a lower-privileged context to administrative level.
Business
Compromised VMs can be used to pivot laterally across the cloud environment, affecting multiple systems and services.
3
Lateral reach — past segmentation narrative 3
Attacker
I establish persistent control over the affected systems and exfiltrate sensitive data or deploy additional malware.
Business
Organizations face data breaches, compliance violations, and operational disruption across their Azure infrastructure.
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