Security readout for executives and security teams
Plain-English summary
CVE-2021-26251 is a denial-of-service issue in Intel Distribution of OpenVINO Toolkit. A logged-in user with network access could potentially disrupt availability. The public bundle does not indicate data theft, data modification, or unauthenticated exploitation.
Executive priority
Treat as a moderate availability risk. Prioritize systems where OpenVINO supports production, customer-facing, or safety-sensitive workloads, but do not treat this as confirmed active exploitation based on the provided evidence.
Technical view
The issue is improper input validation, mapped to CWE-20. CVSS 3.1 is 5.3: network vector, high attack complexity, low privileges required, no user interaction, unchanged scope, and high availability impact only.
Likely exposure
Exposure is most likely where Intel Distribution of OpenVINO Toolkit is deployed in services reachable over a network by authenticated users. The bundle does not list affected versions, directing readers to Intel SA-00642.
Exploitation context
CISA KEV status is false, and the provided sources do not support active exploitation. The CVSS vector indicates exploitation requires authenticated access and high complexity, limiting urgency compared with unauthenticated or low-complexity flaws.
Researcher notes
The bundle provides CVSS and CWE details but not affected version ranges or fixed releases. Analysis should remain tied to Intel SA-00642 before asserting specific products, versions, or remediation status.
Mitigation direction
- Review Intel SA-00642 for affected versions and vendor remediation guidance.
- Inventory OpenVINO Toolkit deployments across servers, containers, and build images.
- Restrict network access to OpenVINO-dependent services to trusted authenticated users.
- Apply vendor-recommended updates or mitigations once confirmed from Intel guidance.
- Monitor OpenVINO workloads for crashes, restarts, or abnormal availability loss.
Validation and detection
- Confirm whether Intel Distribution of OpenVINO Toolkit is present in the environment.
- Compare deployed versions against Intel SA-00642 affected-version guidance.
- Identify services exposing OpenVINO functionality over network-accessible paths.
- Verify only expected authenticated users can reach those services.
- Check operational logs for unexplained denial-of-service symptoms.
Public sources used
Generated from the cited source records. This long-tail analysis has not been individually reviewed by a named human.
Conservative CVE-to-ATT&CK context
These mappings and lookup hints may be relevant to the vulnerability behavior, CWE, affected product, or exposure path. Glexia-inferred context is not an official MITRE, ATT&CK, CWE, or CVE Program mapping.
ATT&CK lookup starting points
Use these exact CWE pages and searches to review the Glexia ATT&CK library from this CVE's weakness and description context.
CWE-20: Exact CWE lookup
Use the exact CWE identifier as the starting point before reviewing related ATT&CK behavior. Open the exact CWE lookup page first, then review the ATT&CK searches from that MITRE weakness context. This is a Glexia lookup hint, not an official ATT&CK mapping.
Open ATT&CK lookupCVE-2021-26251 mapping review
Open the CVE-to-ATT&CK bridge for reviewed, inferred, or future official mappings tied to this CVE.
Open ATT&CK lookup- Severity
- Medium
- CVSS
- 5.3 (3.1)
- Known Exploited
- No
- Published
Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
CNA and ADP enrichment extracted from CVE v5
These fields come from the CVE record and ADP containers, not from Glexia's Take. They preserve time-varying source decisions such as CISA SSVC, KEV status, CVSS metrics, and provider references.
CVSS vector scores
1 official scoreWe collect every scored CVSS vector available in the official CNA and ADP containers. When more than one version is present, the table keeps the source vectors side by side instead of collapsing them into the highest score.
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H1.63.6Primary CVE scoreVulnerability scoring details
Base CVSS 3.1 score
5.3MediumVector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Source materials
Products and packages named in the record
CWE details
CWE links open Glexia weakness intelligence pages with official CWE context, developer remediation guidance, and related CVE mappings.