🛡️ CVE-2021-38599 — wal-g

🟠 CVSS 8.0 — High ✅ No Known Exploit CWE-922 OSV
8.0
CVSS Score
0 Low4 Medium7 High9 Critical10

Description

Improper use of cryptographic key in wal-g

WAL-G before 1.1, when a non-libsodium build (e.g., one of the official binary releases published as GitHub Releases) is used, silently ignores the libsodium encryption key and uploads cleartext backups. This is arguably a Principle of Least Surprise violation because "the user likely wanted to encrypt all file activity."

How this vulnerability can be exploited

This issue can be reached over the network, attack complexity is low, an attacker needs no privileges on the target. No user interaction is required. The scope is unchanged, so the impact stays within the vulnerable component. Rated impact: confidentiality high, integrity none, availability none.

Weakness class

CVE-2021-38599 is classified as CWE-922: Insecure Storage of Sensitive Information. Sensitive information is kept somewhere without the protection its sensitivity requires.

Affected software

CVE-2021-38599 is recorded against 1 package.

  • github.com/wal-g/wal-g

Timeline and source

Published on 2 September 2021 and last revised on 8 November 2023. No public exploit is currently recorded for this entry. Record sourced from OSV.

References

nvd.nist.gov (Advisory)
github.com (Web)
github.com (Web)
github.com (Package)
github.com (Web)

Details

Severity HIGH
CVSS Score 8.0
CVSS Vector CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
CWE CWE-922
Public Exploit ✅ No
Source OSV
Published 2021-09-02
Updated 2026-08-12
Modified 2023-11-08
Fix URL N/A

Affected Packages

Software From version Fixed in
github.com/wal-g/wal-g — —

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