MDE DLL Search Order Hijacking vulnerability

published 2021-11-10 4y ago modified 2026-06-17 4mo ago also EUVD-2021-18728

cvss: 7.8; version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev: Not listed; not in CISA's catalog
epss: 0.2%; EPSS 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 9%
public exploits: 0; none known

DLL Search Order Hijacking Vulnerability in McAfee Drive Encryption (MDE) prior to 7.3.0 HF2 (7.3.0.183) allows local users to execute arbitrary code and escalate privileges via execution from a compromised folder.

Patch / fix

fixed in 1

McAfee,LLC McAfee Drive Encryption (MDE) 7.3.0 HF2

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Exploit prediction

0.20% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 9% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by	version	score	vector
CNA	3.1	7.8	CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
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	4.6	AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P

Affected products

McAfee,LLC McAfee Drive Encryption (MDE)

Classification

Weakness

CWE-427 Uncontrolled Search Path Element

References

kc.mcafee.com /corporate/index?page=content&id=SB10374
broken-link

Sources

CVE List CVE-2021-31853
NVD CVE-2021-31853

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