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CVE-2022-21882

Exploitation: active CVSS 7.0 HIGH Ransomware: known use

CVSS base score: 7.0 (High) vendor CNA · v3.1

Score assigned by the vendor's own CVE Numbering Authority (CNA); CISA's Vulnrichment program adds a score only when the CNA omits one.

Microsoft Win32k Privilege Escalation Vulnerability

Vendor: Microsoft   Product: Win32k

Description

Microsoft Win32k contains an unspecified vulnerability that allows for privilege escalation.

Lifecycle Timeline

Each milestone comes from a different source, so gaps between them are gaps in what those sources publish, not evidence that nothing happened. EPSS history for this CVE holds 253 points from 2022-02-12, tracked daily from 2026-09-09; earlier points are weekly, which dates a spike to within a week. Peak probability 90.1% on 2026-03-28.

Published Applicability

CVE List v5 (CNA container) 11 affected · 0 fixed · 0 not affected

Check whether a specific version is affected →

What each source publishes about which product versions carry this vulnerability, kept as written rather than merged. Absence here means no source has published applicability data, not that nothing is affected.

Research & News Coverage

No mentions found in monitored research blogs or news feeds.

Detection & Exploitation

Exploit / Pen Test
Network IDS/IPS
none published
Host / SIEM
none published

Coverage across public collections only: Nuclei and OpenVAS NVT (scan); Snort and Suricata ET Open (network); Sigma and YARA (host/SIEM); Metasploit, Exploit-DB and public GitHub repositories (exploit). Absence here means nothing public was found, not that detection is impossible.
GitHub PoC repositories are collected automatically by PoC-in-GitHub (CC0) and are not vetted: some are fakes and some are malware. Treat them as evidence that code was published, not as code to run.
OpenVAS coverage derives from the Greenbone Community Feed, made available under the Open Database License (ODbL) v1.0; its individual Vulnerability Tests are licensed GNU GPL v2.

Microsoft Assessment

published by the affected vendor via MSRC

Win32k Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Exploitation More Likely
Yes
No
Important
Elevation of Privilege
Windows Win32K
2022-01-11

The vendor's own judgement about their own code, shown alongside CISA's rather than merged into it. The exploitability index is a forward-looking prediction, distinct from a CVSS severity or CISA's SSVC decision, and vendors often report observed exploitation before a CVE reaches the KEV catalog. Vendor advisory →

CISA Assessment (Vulnrichment / SSVC)

active
no
total
—
7.0 HIGH
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H/E:U/RL:O/RC:C
CWE-787 — Out-of-bounds Write
2025-02-04

D3FEND Countermeasures

Defensive techniques inferred by MITRE D3FEND from the underlying weakness (CWE-787) — general hardening and detection guidance for this weakness class, not a vendor patch for this specific CVE.

KEV Catalog Status

2022-02-04
2022-02-18
Known

Listed By

SourceDateRecord
CISA KEV 2022-02-04 source record →
CISA Vulnrichment 2025-02-04 source record →

Referenced in Advisories

DateAdvisoryIssuer
2024-07-25 North Korea Cyber Group Conducts Global Espionage Campaign to Advance Regime’s Military and Nuclear Programs NSA
2024-07-25 North Korea Cyber Group Conducts Global Espionage Campaign to Advance Regime's Military and Nuclear Programs NSA

Weaponization Timeline — Offensive & Testing Tools

No exploit-tool sightings recorded for this CVE.

Evidence tiers are explained on the About page — a merged Metasploit module is far stronger evidence than a distro package mention.

External References