CVE-2021-20385: 
IBM Guardium Appliance vulnerability analysis and mitigation

IBM Security Guardium 11.2 was found to contain a critical security vulnerability (CVE-2021-20385) that could allow a remote authenticated attacker to execute arbitrary commands on the system. The vulnerability was disclosed on May 21, 2021, and affects IBM Security Guardium version 11.2. The issue stems from the ability of an attacker to send specially-crafted requests to execute arbitrary commands on the affected system (IBM Support, NVD).

The vulnerability has been assigned a CVSS v3.1 base score of 7.2 (HIGH) by NIST with vector CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H, while IBM Corporation assigned it a CVSS v3.0 score of 8.4 (HIGH) with vector CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:R/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H. The vulnerability requires high privileges but has low attack complexity, and can be exploited remotely over the network. The attack requires user interaction according to IBM's assessment (NVD).

If successfully exploited, this vulnerability allows an attacker to execute arbitrary commands on the affected system with high impacts on confidentiality, integrity, and availability. The successful exploitation could lead to complete system compromise within the scope of the affected component (NVD, IBM Support).

IBM has released security patches to address this vulnerability. Users are advised to update to the latest version through the IBM Fix Central. For IBM Security Guardium 11.2, the fix is available via SqlGuard11.0p250Bundle_Jul-14-2021 (IBM Support).