CVE-2021-21257
No exploitation reported by the sources we read.
- Published2021-06-18
- Fixed in4.6
- WeaknessCWE-787
Am I affected?
Debian, Ubuntu or Red Hat sometimes backport a fix without changing the upstream version number: such a version reads « to verify », never « affected ».With a domain, we read the version its public headers and pages expose. A distribution build can carry the fix under an older number.
Description
Contiki-NG is an open-source, cross-platform operating system for internet of things devices. The RPL-Classic and RPL-Lite implementations in the Contiki-NG operating system versions prior to 4.6 do not validate the address pointer in the RPL source routing header This makes it possible for an attacker to cause out-of-bounds writes with packets injected into the network stack. Specifically, the problem lies in the rpl_ext_header_srh_update function in the two rpl-ext-header.c modules for RPL-Classic and RPL-Lite respectively. The addr_ptr variable is calculated using an unvalidated CMPR field value from the source routing header. An out-of-bounds write can be triggered on line 151 in os/net/routing/rpl-lite/rpl-ext-header.c and line 261 in os/net/routing/rpl-classic/rpl-ext-header.c, which contain the following memcpy call with addr_ptr as destination. The problem has been patched in Contiki-NG 4.6. Users can apply a patch out-of-band as a workaround.
Timeline
dates in UTC- 2021-06-1821:15CVE publishedNVD
Observed activity
isMalicious corpus · updated 2026-10-23 18:48 UTCBlock these indicators
- Firewall list (EDL, text): https://api.ismalicious.com/edl/cve/CVE-2021-21257?format=txt
- CSV export: https://api.ismalicious.com/edl/cve/CVE-2021-21257?format=csv
- TAXII collection of exploited CVEs
- The EDL and CSV take an API key on the Pro plan.
Versions per branch
NVD| Branch | Affected | Fixed in | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4.6 | < 4.6 | 4.6 | NVD |
as publishedRanges as NVD and OSV publish them; a distribution’s build can be fixed under an older number.
Fix
- Update Contiki-ng to 4.6
Advisories and patches
- github.comPatch
- github.comPatch
Detection
- Nuclei template
- none so far ProjectDiscovery
- Exploit-DB
- no entry Exploit-DB
- Proof-of-concept repositories
- none listed PoC-in-GitHub
Sources
- CNACVSS 3.18.2read 2026-10-23
- NVDCVSS 3.17.5read 2026-10-23
- NVDCVSS 2.05read 2026-10-23
- CNAweakness (CWE)CWE-787read 2026-10-23
- FIRST EPSSEPSS score1.1 %2026-10-22
Technical details
- CVSS v3 Vector
- CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
- Published
- 2021-06-18
- Last Modified
- 2026-06-17
- NVD status
- Modified
Frequently asked questions
What is CVE-2021-21257?
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