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Vulnerability record · public intelligence
CVE-2021-40830
MEDIUM

Improper certificate management in AWS IoT Device SDK v2

Published Nov 22, 2021 · Updated Nov 3, 2026

Severity · CVSSMEDIUM · Not scored
Known exploitationNot listed
EPSS / likelihood0.39%
QFinch risk scoreNot available

Original summary

Normalized public record · Updated Nov 3, 2026

Improper certificate management in AWS IoT Device SDK v2

Publisher and source text is retained separately from QFinch interpretation.

QFinch assessment

The AWS IoT Device SDK v2 for Java, Python, C++ and Node.js appends a user supplied Certificate Authority (CA) to the root CAs instead of overriding it on Unix systems. TLS handshakes will thus succeed if the peer can be verified either from the user-supplied CA or the system’s default trust-store. Attackers with access to a host’s trust stores or are able to compromise a certificate authority already in the host's trust store (note: the attacker must also be able to spoof DNS in this case) may be able to use this issue to bypass CA pinning. An attacker could then spoof the MQTT broker, and either drop traffic and/or respond with the attacker's data, but they would not be able to forward this data on to the MQTT broker because the attacker would still need the user's private keys to authenticate against the MQTT broker. The 'aws_tls_ctx_options_override_default_trust_store_*' function within the aws-c-io submodule has been updated to override the default trust store. This corrects this issue. This issue affects: Amazon Web Services AWS IoT Device SDK v2 for Java versions prior to 1.5.0 on Linux/Unix. Amazon Web Services AWS IoT Device SDK v2 for Python versions prior to 1.6.1 on Linux/Unix. Amazon Web Services AWS IoT Device SDK v2 for C++ versions prior to 1.12.7 on Linux/Unix. Amazon Web Services AWS IoT Device SDK v2 for Node.js versions prior to 1.5.3 on Linux/Unix. Amazon Web Services AWS-C-IO 0.10.4 on Linux/Unix.

Evidence: public source records

Affected products

Affected scope reported by the available public evidence
Affected package, product or rangeFix status
Consult the referenced vendor advisory for affected versions.Consult source advisory

Matching a version is only one part of assessing exposure. QFinch has not assessed your environment on this public page.

Remediation

Apply the vendor-supported fixed release or mitigation, then verify the affected component is no longer reachable.

  1. Confirm the affected product and reachable code path exist in your environment.
  2. Apply the vendor-supported patch or mitigation from the primary advisory.
  3. Rescan the exact deployed revision and retain verification evidence.
Review primary references

Evidence coverage

FIRST-EPSSCVE-LIST-V5
SSVC priority
LOW
Confidence
Not available
Aliases
None reported

Scores appear only when corresponding evidence exists. Missing data is never interpreted as zero risk.

Sources and record history

  1. GitHub advisory ↗
  2. Source repository ↗
  3. Source repository ↗
  4. Source repository ↗
  5. Source repository ↗

Record history

Published Nov 22, 2021 · Last refreshed Nov 3, 2026