Insight AgentApplication · Rapid7

CVE-2022-0237

HIGH · 7.8 CVSS v3.1 Published 2022-03-17
Fix available
A fix is available. Upgrade to after 3.1.2.38 or later.
See remediation →
80/100
Remediation priority · High
Public exploit Zero-click

Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.

NVD · unedited
Rapid7 Insight Agent versions 3.1.2.38 and earlier suffer from a privilege escalation vulnerability, whereby an attacker can hijack the flow of execution due to an unquoted argument to the runas.exe command used by the ir_agent.exe component, resulting in elevated rights and persistent access to the machine. This issue was fixed in Rapid7 Insight Agent version 3.1.3.80.

Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.

dbcve analysis
How this class of weakness works · CWE-264

A legacy NVD category covering weaknesses where permissions or privileges are assigned, checked, or dropped incorrectly, so an action ends up running with more access than it should. It is an umbrella label from older records, not a single flaw. The remedy depends on the specific case, but the throughline is least privilege with explicit, checked transitions wherever privilege changes.

General guidance for the permissions, privileges & access controls class — the official description and references above are authoritative for this specific CVE. Want a bespoke review and a reviewed fix? Ask our team →

Affected products & versions What the vendor confirmedThe version ranges the vendor confirmed as vulnerable. If your version sits inside a range here, treat yourself as exposed until you have upgraded.

NVD · CPE data
Insight AgentApplication
Affected:<= 3.1.2.38

CVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.

From the vector
Attack vector
Local
Complexity
Low
Privileges
Low
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
High
Availability
High

CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.

dbcve · scoped
Upgrade available Upgrade to a release after 3.1.2.38
Recommended fix High confidence

Insight Agent version 3.1.3.80

  1. Identify all systems running Insight Agent version 3.1.2.38 or earlier using your asset inventory or deployment tools
  2. Download Insight Agent version 3.1.3.80 or later from the official Rapid7 portal or your existing software distribution point
  3. Deploy the updated agent to affected systems using your standard deployment mechanism (e.g., GPO, SCCM, Ansible, or manual installation)
  4. Verify the agent upgrade completed successfully by checking the agent version in the Insight platform console or on the local system
  5. Confirm the ir_agent.exe component is no longer invoking runas.exe with unquoted arguments by reviewing the process command line on a sample system

Generated from the published advisory — verify against the referenced sources before acting.

We can identify the exact fixed release, upgrade, and verify it in staging — typical engagement from $1,950. Get the upgrade done

Scan for this in your stack

Free · runs locally
dbcve dependency scanner

Check whether your project pulls in CVE-2022-0237 — or any other known-vulnerable package — straight from your lock files. Free and open source; it runs locally and uploads nothing.

References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.

Primary sources

Practitioner notes

Contributed

Peer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2022-0237 in production — separate from our analysis above.

No notes yet

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What this is

A place for practitioners to share what actually worked: a mitigation you’ve tested, a configuration change, a version- or environment-specific caveat, or a link to a verified patch. The most useful notes rise to the top as peers upvote them, so the signal stays high.

What belongs here
  • Verified mitigations, workarounds, and config changes
  • Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
  • No weaponised exploit code, or anything meant to cause harm
  • No spam, self-promotion, credentials, or personal data