Critical Vulnerability: CVE-2021-1396 — cisco — application_services_engine, application_policy_infrastructure_controller

CVE-2021-1396 is a critical-severity vulnerability tracked under the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures program. Multiple vulnerabilities in Cisco Application Services Engine could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to gain privileged access to host-level operations or to learn device-specific information

Check whether your environment runs application_services_engine, application_policy_infrastructure_controller. If you operate any of those, treat yourself as in scope until you have evidence otherwise. A Vulnios scan will identify the exact assets carrying the affected version.

Critical: do not wait for your normal patch cycle. Verify exposure today, apply the vendor patch immediately, and add detection rules for any post-exploit indicators.

Apply the vendor patch listed in the upstream advisory linked under Sources. If the patch is not yet available, follow the vendor-supplied workaround (often a config flag or feature disable) and add detections for the published exploit pattern in your SIEM. Re-scan after the patch lands to confirm the finding clears.

Watch CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog for CVE-2021-1396. Cross-reference with public exploit databases and your own SIEM/IDS for indicator-of-compromise patterns. Vulnios tracks KEV status automatically and surfaces it on the asset findings view.

Vulnios continuously cross-references your asset inventory against the live CVE feed (NVD, vendor advisories, CISA KEV, and curated OSINT). When a new CVE matches your environment, you get a prioritized finding with the severity, KEV status, exploit-prediction (EPSS), and a direct path to the vendor patch. You can start a free scan from the homepage.