CVE-2026-21661 Vulnerability Analysis & Exploit Details

CVE-2026-21661
Vulnerability Scoring

Analysis In Progress
Analysis In Progress

Attack Complexity Details

  • Attack Complexity:
    Attack Complexity Analysis In Progress
  • Attack Vector:
    Attack Vector Under Analysis
  • Privileges Required: None
    No authentication is required for exploitation.
  • Scope:
    Impact is confined to the initially vulnerable component.
  • User Interaction: None
    No user interaction is necessary for exploitation.

CVE-2026-21661 Details

Status: Awaiting Analysis

Published on: 06 May 2026, 17:16 UTC

CVSS Release:

CVE-2026-21661 Vulnerability Summary

CVE-2026-21661: Uncontrolled Search Path Element vulnerability in JohnsonControls AC2000 on Windows allows Leveraging/Manipulating Configuration File Search Paths. This issue affects AC2000: from 10.6 before release 10, from 11.0 before release 9, from 12 before release 3.

Assessing the Risk of CVE-2026-21661

Access Complexity Graph

The exploitability of CVE-2026-21661 depends on two key factors: attack complexity (the level of effort required to execute an exploit) and privileges required (the access level an attacker needs).

Exploitability Analysis for CVE-2026-21661

No exploitability data is available for CVE-2026-21661.

Understanding AC and PR

A lower complexity and fewer privilege requirements make exploitation easier. Security teams should evaluate these aspects to determine the urgency of mitigation strategies, such as patch management and access control policies.

Attack Complexity (AC) measures the difficulty in executing an exploit. A high AC means that specific conditions must be met, making an attack more challenging, while a low AC means the vulnerability can be exploited with minimal effort.

Privileges Required (PR) determine the level of system access necessary for an attack. Vulnerabilities requiring no privileges are more accessible to attackers, whereas high privilege requirements limit exploitation to authorized users with elevated access.

CVSS Score Breakdown Chart

Above is the CVSS Sub-score Breakdown for CVE-2026-21661, illustrating how Base, Impact, and Exploitability factors combine to form the overall severity rating. A higher sub-score typically indicates a more severe or easier-to-exploit vulnerability.

CIA Impact Analysis

Below is the Impact Analysis for CVE-2026-21661, showing how Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability might be affected if the vulnerability is exploited. Higher values usually signal greater potential damage.

  • Confidentiality: None
    CVE-2026-21661 does not compromise confidentiality.
  • Integrity: None
    CVE-2026-21661 does not impact data integrity.
  • Availability: None
    CVE-2026-21661 does not affect system availability.

CVE-2026-21661 References

External References

CWE Common Weakness Enumeration

CWE-427

CAPEC Common Attack Pattern Enumeration and Classification

  • Leveraging/Manipulating Configuration File Search Paths CAPEC-38 This pattern of attack sees an adversary load a malicious resource into a program's standard path so that when a known command is executed then the system instead executes the malicious component. The adversary can either modify the search path a program uses, like a PATH variable or classpath, or they can manipulate resources on the path to point to their malicious components. J2EE applications and other component based applications that are built from multiple binaries can have very long list of dependencies to execute. If one of these libraries and/or references is controllable by the attacker then application controls can be circumvented by the attacker.
  • Search Order Hijacking CAPEC-471 An adversary exploits a weakness in an application's specification of external libraries to exploit the functionality of the loader where the process loading the library searches first in the same directory in which the process binary resides and then in other directories. Exploitation of this preferential search order can allow an attacker to make the loading process load the adversary's rogue library rather than the legitimate library. This attack can be leveraged with many different libraries and with many different loading processes. No forensic trails are left in the system's registry or file system that an incorrect library had been loaded.

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