Cyber Resilience

CVE-2022-44544

Critical

Published: 06 November 2022

Published
06 November 2022
Modified
02 May 2025
KEV Added
Patch
CVSS Score v3.1 9.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
EPSS Score 0.0054 68.2th percentile
Risk Priority 20 60% EPSS · 20% KEV · 20% CVSS

Summary

CVE-2022-44544 is a critical-severity Execution with Unnecessary Privileges (CWE-250) vulnerability in Mahara Mahara. Its CVSS base score is 9.8 (Critical).

Operationally, ranked in the top 31.8% of CVEs by exploit likelihood; it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

EU & UK References

Vulnerability details

Mahara 21.04 before 21.04.7, 21.10 before 21.10.5, 22.04 before 22.04.3, and 22.10 before 22.10.0 potentially allow a PDF export to trigger a remote shell if the site is running on Ubuntu and the flag -dSAFER is not set with Ghostscript.

CWE(s)

Related Threats

No named actor attribution yet. ATT&CK technique mapping in progress for this CVE.

Affected Assets

mahara
mahara
22.10.0 · 21.04.0 — 21.04.7 · 21.10.0 — 21.10.5 · 22.04.0 — 22.04.3

Mitigating Controls

Likely Mitigating Controls AI

Per-CVE control mapping for this CVE has not run yet; the list below is derived from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry.

addresses: CWE-250

Policy promotes least privilege by defining necessary privileges and management commitment to them.

addresses: CWE-250

Supervision detects and allows removal of unnecessary privileges that enable execution with excess rights.

addresses: CWE-250

Reviewing accounts for compliance, disabling/removing unneeded accounts, and aligning with termination processes prevents execution with unnecessary privileges.

addresses: CWE-250

Separation of duties prevents any single user from holding all privileges needed to complete a critical task, directly reducing execution with unnecessary privileges.

addresses: CWE-250

Directly prevents execution with more privileges than needed for assigned tasks.

addresses: CWE-250

Role-based training on least privilege principles reduces the chance personnel assign or retain unnecessary privileges.

addresses: CWE-250

Analysis of audit records can identify execution with unnecessary privileges through unusual activity patterns.

addresses: CWE-250

Automatic termination after a defined period eliminates unnecessary privileges from persistent connections.

References