Threats / Microsoft / CVE-2021-38648
CVE-2021-38648
· EUVD no mirror located
· GCVE no mirror located
Verified 2026-06-22
Microsoft Open Management Infrastructure (OMI) vulnerability
Microsoft Open Management Infrastructure (OMI) contains a privilege escalation vulnerability affecting Azure VM Management Extensions. The flaw has been exploited in the wild.
Verdict
Today item — known-exploited.
An unspecified privilege escalation vulnerability in OMI allows attackers to elevate permissions on affected Azure virtual machines. Active exploitation in the wild indicates immediate risk to deployed systems.
01
Is it exploitable?
— the evidence, ranked above the scoreReported exploitation
3 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 0.10933 — modeled likelihood of exploitation activity.EPSS is a daily-changing model output — open the source for today's value.
Severity / affected
Affected: Microsoft, Open Management Infrastructure (OMI). Confirm exact fixed builds in the vendor advisory.
Weakness (CWE)
Mapped to CWE-1390 CWE-1390.CWE assignment from the public NVD record; the weakness class drives how the flaw is exploited.
WeaknessCWE-1390 · CWE-1390
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 access to an Azure VM running OMI through a separate vulnerability or misconfiguration.
Business
Attackers establish a foothold on cloud infrastructure with potential lateral movement capability.
2
Keys to the kingdom — privilege/identity takeover narrative 2
Attacker
I exploit the OMI privilege escalation flaw to elevate my permissions from a low-privileged context to administrative level.
Business
Compromised VMs transition from limited-access compromise to full administrative control, enabling data exfiltration and system manipulation.
3
Lateral reach — past segmentation narrative 3
Attacker
I use elevated privileges to access sensitive data, modify configurations, or persist within the Azure environment.
Business
Organizations face data breach risk, compliance violations, and potential compromise of workloads dependent on affected VMs.
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