# CVE-2021-24038: Privilege escalation in Oculus Desktop

> An attacker can exploit a handle management bug in Oculus Desktop to escalate privileges from an unprivileged process to a privileged one.

- **Severity:** High 7.8 (`CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H`)
- **Exploited in the wild:** Not known
- **Login needed:** Any signed-in user
- **Attackable:** Local or same network only
- **Victim action needed:** Not needed
- **Fix available:** No
- **Published:** 18 Aug 2021
- **Updated:** 3 Aug 2024
- **Also known as:** GHSA-gr73-xmrv-34fc

## What is CVE-2021-24038?

CVE-2021-24038 is a high-severity vulnerability in Facebook Oculus Desktop, published on 18 Aug 2021. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.

### Official description

Due to a bug with management of handles in OVRServiceLauncher.exe, an attacker could expose a privileged process handle to an unprivileged process, leading to local privilege escalation. This issue affects Oculus Desktop versions after 1.39 and prior to 31.1.0.67.507.

Weakness: CWE-269 (Improper Privilege Management)

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2021-24038?

It affects 1 product.


Products: Oculus Desktop.

## How do I fix CVE-2021-24038?

No fix has been published for CVE-2021-24038 yet. Limit exposure of the affected software until one is available.

## Is CVE-2021-24038 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2021-24038 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Other vulnerabilities in Facebook Oculus Desktop

- [CVE-2020-1885](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2020-1885/): Path traversal in Oculus Desktop (high 7.8)

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2021-24038 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2021-24038 is a high-severity vulnerability in Facebook Oculus Desktop, published on 18 Aug 2021. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.
Exploitation: There is no known exploitation of CVE-2021-24038 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected product: Facebook Oculus Desktop. No package-level version data is available, so check the vendor advisory linked from the reference page.

Task:
1. Search the dependency manifests and lockfiles (for example package.json, package-lock.json, requirements.txt, poetry.lock, uv.lock, pom.xml, build.gradle, go.mod, Cargo.lock, Gemfile.lock) and any Dockerfiles for the affected packages, including transitive dependencies.
2. If an affected version is in use, upgrade it to the fixed version for its release line with the project's package manager, so the lockfile is regenerated. Prefer the smallest upgrade that fixes it.
3. If there is no fix, or the upgrade would break the build, do not guess: explain the risk and the safest workaround instead.
4. Run the tests and summarise what changed and why.
5. If nothing in the project is affected, say so and change nothing.

Reference: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2021-24038/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2021-24038/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2021-24038
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2021-24038
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2021-24038

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2021-24038/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.