critical Known exploitedREV. 01

CVE-2021-45046Log4j — Incomplete Fix Leaves Lookup Injection Open

The first Log4j fix turned out to be incomplete: in some configurations an attacker who controls thread context data can still trigger a lookup and reach code execution.

YOUR NEXT MOVE

Upgrade Log4j past 2.16.0, and stop treating 2.15.0 as the fixed version.

Read the risk

THE VITAL STATS
CVSS score
9.0/ 10
CVSS v3.1
EPSS probability
100%
Likelihood of exploitation
Attack complexity
High
Conditions needed to exploit
Known exploited
Yes — CISA KEV
CVE published
2021-12-14
Added to KEV
2023-05-01
Exploit published
Not recorded
Confidence
medium
Kill chain
initial access
MITRE ATT&CK
T1190
Severity
critical

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H

Attacker needsControl over a value that reaches thread context data

Behind the card

5 REFERENCES
Field-level provenanceTRACE THE SOURCES +

Which source supports each field, when it was retrieved, and who extracted it.

FieldsSourceRetrievedExtractorConfidence
cvss, exploitation.attack_complexity, exploitation.exploit_available, references, published_atnvd.nist.gov2026-08-07scrty-crds-pipeline/0.1high
exploitation.known_exploited, exploitation.kev_addedcisa.gov2026-08-07scrty-crds-pipeline/0.1high
epssapi.first.org2026-08-07scrty-crds-pipeline/0.1high
title, summary, severity, remediation, mitre_attack, kill_chain, recommended_action, confidence, tags, exploitation.prerequisitesnvd.nist.gov2026-08-07claude-codehigh

Printing history

THE RECORD
  1. r1Initial base card

First printing. This card has not been reprinted since publication.

crds:cve-2021-45046 · CRDS 0.1 · Issued 2026-08-07