CVE-2022-21978: Microsoft Exchange Server Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Overview

Severity
High (CVSS 8.2)
CVSS Vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H/E:U/RL:O/RC:C
Category
Elevation of Privilege
Exploit Status
Not Exploited
Exploitation Likelihood
Less Likely
Patch Tuesday
2022-May
Released
2022-05-10
EPSS Score
0.30% (percentile: 53.1%)

FAQ

Do I need to take further steps to be protected from this vulnerability? Because of additional security hardening work for CVE-2022-21978, the following actions should be taken in addition to application of May 2022 security updates: For customers that have Exchange Server 2016 CU22 or CU23, or Exchange Server 2019 CU11 or CU12 installed Install the May 2022 SU first and then run one of the following commands using Setup.exe in your Exchange Server installation path (e.g., …\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\v15\Bin): Setup.exe /IAcceptExchangeServerLicenseTerms_DiagnosticDataON /PrepareAllDomains Setup.exe /IAcceptExchangeServerLicenseTerms_DiagnosticDataOFF /PrepareAllDomains For customers that have Exchange Server 2013 CU23 installed: Install the May 2022 SU first and then run the following command using Setup.exe in your Exchange Server installation path (e.g., …\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\v15\Bin): Setup.exe /IAcceptExchangeServerLicenseTerms /PrepareAllDomains For customers that have any older version of Exchange Server not listed above: Update your Exchange server to the latest CU, install May 2022 SU and then follow the steps above. NOTE: You need to run /PrepareAllDomains only once per organization and those changes will apply to all versions of Exchange Server within the organization. When you run /PrepareAllDomains, your account needs to be a member of the Enterprise Admins security group. This might be a different account from the one you use to install the SU. Please see New Exchange Server Security Update and Hotfix Packaging for more information According to the CVSS metric, privileges required is high (PR:H). What privileges does an attacker require to exploit this vulnerability? Successful exploitation of this vulnerability requires the attacker to be authenticated to the Exchange Server as a member of a high privileged group. According to the CVSS metric, a successful exploitation could lead to a scope change (S:C). What d

Affected Products (5)

Server Software

  • Microsoft Exchange Server 2016 Cumulative Update 22
  • Microsoft Exchange Server 2019 Cumulative Update 11
  • Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 Cumulative Update 23
  • Microsoft Exchange Server 2016 Cumulative Update 23
  • Microsoft Exchange Server 2019 Cumulative Update 12

Security Updates (5)

Acknowledgments

Joonas Tuomisto of Fujitsu Finland

Revision History

  • 2022-05-10: Information published.