CVE-2022-21978: 
vulnerability analysis and mitigation

Microsoft Exchange Server Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability (CVE-2022-21978) was disclosed on May 10, 2022. The vulnerability affects multiple versions of Microsoft Exchange Server, including Exchange Server 2013 (Cumulative Update 23), Exchange Server 2016 (Cumulative Update 22 and 23), and Exchange Server 2019 (Cumulative Update 11 and 12) (NVD).

The vulnerability has been assigned a CVSS v3.1 base score of 8.2 (HIGH) with the following vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H. Under CVSS v2.0, it received a base score of 7.2 (HIGH) with vector: (AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C) (NVD).

This elevation of privilege vulnerability in Microsoft Exchange Server could allow an attacker to gain elevated privileges within the affected system, potentially leading to complete system compromise with high impacts on confidentiality, integrity, and availability (Rapid7).

Microsoft has released security updates to address this vulnerability. The mitigation requires installing the latest Security Update (SU) and running specific commands based on the Exchange Server version. For Exchange 2013, administrators need to run Setup.exe /IAcceptExchangeServerLicenseTerms /PrepareAllDomains from the installation directory (Microsoft Q&A).