CriticalCVE-2021-22502

    Micro Focus Operation Bridge Report (OBR) Remote Code Execution Vulnerability (CVE-2021-22502)

    Published In CISA KEV since Sources: CVE.org

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    What is affected, what to do

    Remote Code execution vulnerability in Micro Focus Operation Bridge Reporter (OBR) product, affecting version 10.40. The vulnerability could be exploited to allow Remote Code Execution on the OBR server.

    The vulnerability is being actively exploited; treat it as a priority. The available sources name no fixed version. Check the vendor guidance in the references below. Immediate actions, mitigation and detection rules are in the runbook below.

    Affected
    • Operation Bridge Reporter. eq OBR 10.40..OBR 10.40

    Not sure whether and how you are affected? Ask a question about this vulnerability

    Metrics

    9.8

    Priority

    XIEM Effective CVSS: highest available CVSS rating from NVD and vendor data.

    Source: NVD, CVSS v3

    9.8

    CVSS v3

    Severity Critical on the scale from 0 to 10.

    Source: CVE.org

    96.7 %

    EPSS score

    High — model estimates ≥ 50% chance of real-world exploitation within 30 days.

    Source: FIRST EPSS, percentile 99.89

    Show all metrics
    Severity
    Critical
    Priority (0–325)

    The priority score is a consolidated metric that condenses several individual signals into a single, action-guiding ranking: technical severity (CVSS), exploitation likelihood (EPSS), known-exploited status (KEV) and the context of the affected asset. The aim is to answer the only truly important question in vulnerability management: what first?

    Read in glossary
    228.82 Methodology
    Exploit maturity

    An exploit is code or a technique that specifically uses a concrete vulnerability to force unintended behaviour — such as executing code or escalating privileges. It is the tool that turns a theoretical flaw into a practical attack.

    Read in glossary
    actively exploited
    XIEM Effective CVSS

    XIEM® is the tiered managed-security operating model from NEOSEC and a registered trademark of NEOSEC GmbH. It extends classic SIEM — the central collection, normalisation and correlation of security-relevant events — with endpoint forensics, network visibility and deception technology, and consolidates them into three building tiers: Sentry, Orchestrate and Command.

    Read in glossary
    9.8 Methodology
    CVSS v3

    CVSS is the globally established, open standard for assessing the technical severity of a vulnerability on a scale from 0 to 10. It describes how easily a flaw can be exploited and what damage it can cause — but not how likely its actual exploitation is. CVSS and the complementary EPSS deliberately answer different questions.

    Read in glossary
    9.8
    EPSS score

    The EPSS score is the absolute model output for an individual vulnerability: the estimated probability of real-world exploitation within the next 30 days, expressed as a value between 0 and 1 (i.e. 0 % to 100 %). A score of 0.42 means „the model estimates a 42 % chance of real-world exploitation within 30 days“.

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    96.7 %
    High — model estimates ≥ 50% chance of real-world exploitation within 30 days.
    EPSS percentile

    The EPSS percentile is the relative position of a vulnerability within all EPSS-scored CVEs, expressed as a value between 0 and 1. A percentile of 0.90 means „this CVE has a higher EPSS score than 90 % of all other scored CVEs“. Unlike the EPSS score, it is not a probability — but a positioning within a ranking.

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    99.89
    Critical — this CVE ranks in the top fifth of all CVEs scored today (rank ≥ 80%).
    KEV status

    The KEV catalogue is a list maintained by the US authority CISA of vulnerabilities for which active exploitation in the wild has been confirmed. It answers not the question „how severe?“ but „is it already being attacked?“ — thereby sharply prioritising patching.

    Read in glossary
    Actively exploited
    Published
    In CISA KEV since

    The KEV catalogue is a list maintained by the US authority CISA of vulnerabilities for which active exploitation in the wild has been confirmed. It answers not the question „how severe?“ but „is it already being attacked?“ — thereby sharply prioritising patching.

    Read in glossary
    CISA assessment (SSVC)
    Exploitation: active · automatable · Technical impact: total
    Source: CISA Vulnrichment, as of 6 February 2025
    CWE

    CWE is a catalogue of typical weakness types in software and hardware — such as flawed input validation, unsafe memory handling or poor authentication. Where a CVE names a concrete vulnerability in a concrete product, a CWE describes the underlying class of defect.

    Read in glossary
    CWE-78

    Response and mitigation

    Why act now?

    Prioritisation rationale

    The vulnerability is network-reachable and exploitable without authentication, with full loss of confidentiality, integrity and availability — a textbook pre-auth RCE on a management platform that holds broad read access to monitoring data. CISA added it to KEV in 2021 and its exploitation likelihood sits among the highest on the list; no ransomware use is flagged, but monitoring servers are highly attractive pivot points into the wider estate. For NIS2-regulated operators still running OBR 10.40 in production this CVE is top-priority: patch or take it off the network before migration completes.

    1. Runbook step 1

      Immediate response (0-24 h)

      • Inventory all OBR 10.40 instances (default ports TCP 21412 admin console, TCP 8443 BO launchpad) and immediately cut reachability from untrusted networks via perimeter ACL or host firewall.
      • Apply the Micro Focus/OpenText hotfix for CVE-2021-22502 (fixpack on top of OBR 10.40). Verify the exact patch identifier in the vendor portal — OBR is now under the OpenText lifecycle.
      • If the patch cannot be deployed within 24 h, isolate OBR components (SHR, SiteScope collectors, Vertica backend) into a management VLAN and permit access only via an MFA-protected jump host.
      • Rotate OBR service-account credentials (local admin, Vertica/PostgreSQL database user), as RCE under the service account typically enables credential theft.
      • Tightly restrict egress traffic from the OBR host (only defined data sources, no open internet egress) to break reverse shells and second-stage downloads.
      • Rapid forensic sweep: inspect /opt/HP/BSM/, %OvInstallDir% and Tomcat directories for unexpected JSP/WAR artefacts, modified startup scripts, and newly created local accounts within the last 90 days.

    2. Runbook step 2

      Mitigation layers

      • Network segmentation: place OBR in a dedicated monitoring segment; web frontends must not be reachable from user VLANs or the internet. Terminate any inbound traffic on a reverse proxy with client-certificate authentication.
      • WAF/reverse-proxy rules in front of OBR web interfaces: block Java deserialization payloads (rO0AB base64 or raw), oversized multipart bodies, path-traversal patterns (..;/, ..%2f), and unexpected HTTP methods (PUT, DELETE) against OBR endpoints.
      • Endpoint hardening: run Tomcat/JBoss under an unprivileged service account (never root/SYSTEM), enforce AppArmor/SELinux profiles, remove write permissions on the webroot, and enable java.security.manager where feasible.
      • IAM: assign strong, individual passwords to local OBR console admins; remove default credentials; enforce SSO (SAML/LDAP) with MFA.
      • IPS/IDS: enable signatures for known Java deserialization gadget chains (Commons-Collections, Groovy, ROME) on all paths toward OBR hosts and set them to alert-and-block.
      • Lifecycle call: OBR 10.40 is legacy — prioritise a migration plan to a supported monitoring platform (OpenText OBM, Prometheus/Grafana stack, etc.) and document the interim risk acceptance under NIS2.

    3. Runbook step 3

      Detection rules

      • Process ancestry via Sysmon EID 1 / EDR: processes such as cmd.exe, powershell.exe, /bin/sh, bash with parent java.exe/tomcat*/BOE* on OBR hosts are highly suspicious. Sigma shape: parent_image|endswith: '\\java.exe' combined with a shell child.
      • Filesystem monitoring (Sysmon EID 11 / auditd watch): new .jsp, .war, .class files under Tomcat webapps or OBR deploy paths outside planned change windows.
      • Web-server access logs: POST requests with Content-Type: application/x-java-serialized-object or base64 bodies starting with rO0AB to OBR URIs; also unusually large POSTs (> 100 KB) to administrative endpoints.
      • Network telemetry (Zeek/Suricata): outbound sessions from the OBR host to unapproved destinations, especially TCP/443 to pastebin/raw hosts, or LDAP/RMI on non-standard ports (JNDI callbacks).
      • KQL example (Microsoft Defender/Sentinel): DeviceProcessEvents | where InitiatingProcessFileName in~ ('java.exe','javaw.exe') | where FileName in~ ('cmd.exe','powershell.exe','sh','bash') | where DeviceName has 'obr'.

    Detection rules

    No NEOSEC detection rule is available for this vulnerability yet.

    Classification under NIS2 and CRA

    Rule-based classification from exploitation status and severity. It does not replace a case-by-case assessment.

    NIS2

    NIS2 is EU Directive (EU) 2022/2555 to raise the level of cybersecurity across the Union. It substantially broadens obligations compared with the first NIS directive: more sectors, mandatory risk management, staged reporting duties and personal accountability of senior management.

    Read in glossary
    Actively exploited: treat the vulnerability as a priority in vulnerability handling under Art. 21(2)(e) NIS2. If it is exploited in your environment, check the reporting obligation under Art. 23 (early warning within 24 hours).
    CRA

    The CRA is EU Regulation (EU) 2024/2847 setting horizontal cybersecurity requirements for „products with digital elements“ — from industrial controllers and software to connected consumer devices. For the first time manufacturers must ensure security across the entire product lifecycle, handle vulnerabilities and provide security updates.

    Read in glossary
    Since 11.09.2026, manufacturers of affected products with digital elements must report actively exploited vulnerabilities under Art. 14 CRA, with an early warning within 24 hours via ENISA's single reporting platform.
    ISO/IEC 27001

    ISO/IEC 27001 is the internationally leading standard for an information security management system (ISMS). It describes a risk-based, process-oriented framework to systematically plan, implement, review and improve information security.

    Read in glossary
    Control A.8.8, management of technical vulnerabilities: assess relevance to your systems, plan remediation and keep evidence.

    Description

    Remote Code execution vulnerability in Micro Focus Operation Bridge Reporter (OBR) product, affecting version 10.40. The vulnerability could be exploited to allow Remote Code Execution on the OBR server.

    Source: NVD (NIST), cvelistv5, CISA KEV Catalog

    Affected products

    The following versions are affected. Older releases of the same product line are also vulnerable unless stated otherwise.

    Affected products
    Affected versionsFixed in
    —Operation Bridge Reporter.
    • OBR 10.40
    • —
    microfocusoperation_bridge_reporter
    • 10.40
    • —

    Vendors and products

    Weakness classes (CWE)

    • CWE-78Improper Neutralization of Special Elements used in an OS Command ('OS Command Injection')

      Base

      The product constructs all or part of an OS command using externally-influenced input from an upstream component, but it does not neutralize or incorrectly neutralizes special elements that could modify the intended OS command when it is sent to a downstream component.

      Entry at MITRE CWE-78

    Public exploit references

    Publicly reported proof-of-concepts, exploit modules and detection templates for this vulnerability. NEOSEC links to the original sources only and does not provide any exploit code.

    Public exploit references
    CISA KEV CatalogCISA Known Exploited Vulnerability (opens in a new tab)cisa.govactively exploited
    Packet StormMicro Focus Operations Bridge Reporter Unauthenticated Command Injection (opens in a new tab)packetstormsecurity.comPoC (publicly reported)reported, not verified—

    References & sources

    • softwaresupport.softwaregrp.comdoc/KM03775947x_refsource_MISC, Vendor advisory
    • zerodayinitiative.comadvisories/ZDI-21-153x_refsource_MISC, Third-party advisory, Vulnerability database
    • zerodayinitiative.comadvisories/ZDI-21-154x_refsource_MISC, Third-party advisory, Vulnerability database
    • packetstormsecurity.comfiles/162408/Micro-Focus-Operations-Bridge-Reporter-Unauthentic…x_refsource_MISC, Exploit, Third-party advisory, Vulnerability database
    • cisa.govknown-exploited-vulnerabilities-catalog?field_cve=CVE-2021-22502government-resource, US government resource
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