Security readout for executives and security teams
Plain-English summary
CVE-2021-27772 affects HCL Sametime 11.6. An authenticated user could read group chat conversations without being a participant, exposing confidential discussions. The issue is rated high because it directly impacts confidentiality with low attack complexity.
Executive priority
Treat this as high priority if Sametime 11.6 is in use. The business risk is unauthorized internal disclosure of private group conversations, not system takeover. Patch or follow vendor guidance promptly, especially in sensitive business units.
Technical view
The CVE describes an authorization failure, mapped to CWE-285, in HCL Sametime 11.6. Network-accessible, low-privileged users can obtain contents of multi-user group conversations without membership. CVSS 3.1 is 7.1 with high confidentiality impact and no user interaction required.
Likely exposure
Organizations running HCL Sametime 11.6 are the known affected population. Exposure is most relevant where many authenticated users can access Sametime and private group chats carry sensitive business, legal, incident, or customer information.
Exploitation context
The source bundle does not identify active exploitation, and the CVE is not listed as KEV. Public evidence provided here supports a serious information disclosure risk, but not internet-wide exploitation or public exploit availability.
Researcher notes
Evidence is limited to the CVE metadata and HCL advisory reference. The vulnerability is best understood as broken authorization around group conversation membership. Avoid assuming affected versions beyond 11.6 or fixes beyond the HCL advisory.
Mitigation direction
- Check HCL KB0097430 for vendor-supported remediation and affected-version guidance.
- Inventory HCL Sametime deployments and identify any version 11.6 systems.
- Prioritize remediation for environments carrying confidential group conversations.
- Limit Sametime access to necessary authenticated users until remediated.
- Avoid using vulnerable group chats for highly sensitive discussions.
Validation and detection
- Confirm whether any deployed HCL Sametime instance is version 11.6.
- Compare installed versions against HCL KB0097430 guidance.
- Identify business groups using Sametime for confidential group discussions.
- Review available access and chat audit records for unusual authenticated access patterns.
- Document remediation status and residual exposure for vulnerability tracking.
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-285: 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-2021-27772 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
- High
- CVSS
- 7.1 (3.1)
- Known Exploited
- No
- Published
Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:L
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:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:L2.84.2Primary CVE scoreVulnerability scoring details
Base CVSS 3.1 score
7.1HighVector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:L
Source materials
- CVE List V5 sourceCVE List V5
- https://support.hcltechsw.com/csm?id=kb_article&sysparm_article=KB0097430CVE reference · x_refsource_MISC
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.
Improper Authorization
Improper Authorization represents a recurring weakness pattern that can create exploitable paths when design, validation, or implementation controls are missing.