Threats / Dell / CVE-2021-21551
CVE-2021-21551
· EUVD no mirror located
· GCVE no mirror located
Verified 2026-06-22
Dell dbutil Driver vulnerability
Dell dbutil driver contains insufficient access control allowing privilege escalation, denial-of-service, or information disclosure on affected systems.
Verdict
Today item — known-exploited.
A local privilege escalation vulnerability in Dell's dbutil driver enables attackers with limited system access to gain elevated privileges, disrupt service availability, or access sensitive data. Active exploitation in the wild increases risk.
01
Is it exploitable?
— the evidence, ranked above the scoreExploit available
Fully weaponized — public exploit code is cataloged for this vulnerability.We link the existence of the exploit; we do not host or redistribute payloads.
Reported exploitation
9 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 2022-03-31).
Probability (EPSS)
EPSS 0.58132 — modeled likelihood of exploitation activity.EPSS is a daily-changing model output — open the source for today's value.
Severity / affected
Affected: Dell, dbutil Driver. Confirm exact fixed builds in the vendor advisory.
Weakness (CWE)
Mapped to CWE-782 CWE-782.CWE assignment from the public NVD record; the weakness class drives how the flaw is exploited.
WeaknessCWE-782 · CWE-782
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 gain initial local access to a system running the vulnerable dbutil driver.
Business
Attacker establishes foothold on enterprise endpoint or server infrastructure.
2
Keys to the kingdom — privilege/identity takeover narrative 2
Attacker
I exploit insufficient access controls in the driver to escalate my privileges to system or administrator level.
Business
Attacker obtains elevated permissions, enabling lateral movement and deeper system compromise.
3
Lateral reach — past segmentation narrative 3
Attacker
I leverage elevated privileges to access sensitive data stored on the system or connected resources.
Business
Confidential information, credentials, or intellectual property is exposed to unauthorized parties.
4
Data at risk — exfiltration narrative 4
Attacker
I trigger a denial-of-service condition by abusing the driver vulnerability to crash or hang the system.
Business
Critical business operations are disrupted, reducing availability and productivity.
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