CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2022-23511 — Amazon Cloudwatch Agent security vulnerability

High CVSS 7.1

A privilege escalation issue exists within the Amazon CloudWatch Agent for Windows, software for collecting metrics and logs from Amazon EC2 instances and on-premises servers, in versions up to and including v1.247354. When users trigger a repair of the Agent, a pop-up window opens with SYSTEM permissions. Users with administrative access to affected hosts may use this to create a new command prompt as NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM. To trigger this issue, the third party must be able to access the affected host and elevate their privileges such that they're able to trigger the agent repair process. They must also be able to install the tools required to trigger the issue. This issue does not affect the CloudWatch Agent for macOS or Linux. Agent users should upgrade to version 1.247355 of the CloudWatch Agent to address this issue. There is no recommended work around. Affected users must update the installed version of the CloudWatch Agent to address this issue.

Severity
High
CVSS
7.1 (3.1)
Published
2022-12-12
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
windows/system
Weaknesses
CWE-274

Affected products

  • amazon / cloudwatch_agent

Matched remediation archetype

Privilege escalation and unsafe privilege management

This catalog composition supplies bounded fallback guidance. Explicitly reviewed curated workflows load with the complete record below.

Check exposure

  • Map service accounts, operating-system identities, roles, capabilities, impersonation, set-user transitions, and administrative helper paths.
  • Determine whether untrusted users or lower-privilege processes can reach the affected transition or modify inputs it trusts.
  • Review file, socket, registry, device, job, container, and cloud-role permissions used before and after privilege changes.

Remediate safely

  • Apply the supported fix and redesign privileged operations as a minimal, authenticated, allowlisted interface.
  • Drop privileges before processing untrusted input, verify the drop succeeds, and remove unnecessary roles, capabilities, and write permissions.
  • Validate ownership and permissions at time of use and add explicit lower-to-higher privilege boundary tests.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

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