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CVE-2021-22681

Exploitation: active CVSS 9.8 CRITICAL

CVSS base score: 9.8 (Critical) CISA · v3.1

Score assigned by CISA's Vulnrichment program; the vendor's CVE record did not include one.

Rockwell Multiple Products Insufficient Protected Credentials Vulnerability

Vendor: Rockwell   Product: Multiple Products

Description

Multiple Rockwell products contain an insufficient protected credentials vulnerability. Studio 5000 Logix Designer software may allow a key to be discovered. This key is used to verify Logix controllers are communicating with Rockwell Automation design software. If successfully exploited, this vulnerability could allow an unauthorized application to connect with Logix controllers. To leverage this vulnerability, an unauthorized user would require network access to the controller.

Lifecycle Timeline

Each milestone comes from a different source, so gaps between them are gaps in what those sources publish, not evidence that nothing happened. EPSS history for this CVE holds 262 points from 2021-12-11, tracked daily from 2026-09-09; earlier points are weekly, which dates a spike to within a week. Peak probability 63.6% on 2026-08-29.

Published Applicability

CVE List v5 (CNA container) 8 affected · 0 fixed · 0 not affected

Check whether a specific version is affected →

What each source publishes about which product versions carry this vulnerability, kept as written rather than merged. Absence here means no source has published applicability data, not that nothing is affected.

Research & News Coverage

No mentions found in monitored research blogs or news feeds.

Detection & Exploitation

Scan
none published
Exploit / Pen Test
Network IDS/IPS
none published
Host / SIEM
none published

Coverage across public collections only: Nuclei and OpenVAS NVT (scan); Snort and Suricata ET Open (network); Sigma and YARA (host/SIEM); Metasploit, Exploit-DB and public GitHub repositories (exploit). Absence here means nothing public was found, not that detection is impossible.
GitHub PoC repositories are collected automatically by PoC-in-GitHub (CC0) and are not vetted: some are fakes and some are malware. Treat them as evidence that code was published, not as code to run.
OpenVAS coverage derives from the Greenbone Community Feed, made available under the Open Database License (ODbL) v1.0; its individual Vulnerability Tests are licensed GNU GPL v2.

CISA Assessment (Vulnrichment / SSVC)

active
yes
total
9.8 CRITICAL
—
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
CWE-522 — Insufficiently Protected Credentials CWE-522
2026-03-05

D3FEND Countermeasures

Defensive techniques inferred by MITRE D3FEND from the underlying weakness (CWE-522) — general hardening and detection guidance for this weakness class, not a vendor patch for this specific CVE.

KEV Catalog Status

2026-03-05
2026-03-26
Unknown

Listed By

SourceDateRecord
CISA KEV 2026-03-05 source record →
CISA Vulnrichment 2026-03-05 source record →

Referenced in Advisories

DateAdvisoryIssuer
2026-04-07 Iranian-Affiliated Cyber Actors Exploit Programmable Logic Controllers Across US Critical Infrastructure NSA

Weaponization Timeline — Offensive & Testing Tools

No exploit-tool sightings recorded for this CVE.

Evidence tiers are explained on the About page — a merged Metasploit module is far stronger evidence than a distro package mention.

External References