CVE-2021-32086: Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance

Critical severity, CVSS 9.8. EPSS: 0.3% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

An issue was discovered in Quest KACE Systems Deployment Appliance (SMA) 11.0.273. It uses a hardcoded symmetric encryption key to encrypt secrets in the MySQL databases. (This key is not unique for each installation.) An attacker that gains access to the MySQL server or a backup files can decrypt the secrets. Often, the decrypted secrets can be used to escalate privileges within KACE, or gain privileged access to unrelated systems or services.

Affected products

• Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance: version 11.0.273 only

Published 2026-07-27. Last modified 2026-08-03.