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Fencer Intel
high 7.8

CVE-2021-20172 json

All known versions of the Netgear Genie Installer for macOS contain a local privilege escalation vulnerability.

published 4y ago modified 4mo ago also EUVD-2021-7629

cvss
7.8
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.3%
EPSS 0.3% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 22%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

All known versions of the Netgear Genie Installer for macOS contain a local privilege escalation vulnerability. The installer of the macOS version of Netgear Genie handles certain files in an insecure way. A malicious actor who has local access to the endpoint on which the software is going to be installed may overwrite certain files to obtain privilege escalation to root.

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Exploit prediction

0.30% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 22% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

Exploits and checks

  • tenable.com https://www.tenable.com/security/research/tra-2021-56 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.1 7.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD 2.0 7.2 AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C

Affected products

  • n/a Netgear Genie Installer for macOS

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-732 Incorrect Permission Assignment for Critical Resource

References

Sources

Fencer Intel keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.