Apex OneApplication · Trendmicro

CVE-2022-44650

HIGH · 7.8 CVSS v3.1 Published 2022-12-12
Fix available
A fix is available. Upgrade to 14.0.11789 or later.
See remediation →
80/100
Remediation priority · High
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
A memory corruption vulnerability in the Unauthorized Change Prevention service of Trend Micro Apex One and Apex One as a Service could allow a local attacker to elevate privileges on affected installations. Please note: an attacker must first obtain the ability to execute low-privileged code on the target system in order to exploit this vulnerability.

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 · high confidence

A memory corruption vulnerability exists in the Unauthorized Change Prevention service of Trend Micro Apex One and Apex One as a Service. An attacker who already has low-privileged code execution on the target system can exploit this memory corruption to elevate privileges to SYSTEM level, bypassing operating system security controls.

MitigationApply the vendor-supplied security patch for Apex One and Apex One as a Service. Organizations should also review the principle of least privilege for user accounts and ensure attackers cannot easily achieve initial low-privileged code execution.

Verify against the referenced sources before acting — the references below are authoritative for this CVE, this summary is not.

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
Apex OneApplication
Affected:< 14.0.11789= 2019

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

Am I affected? How to checkSteps we derive from the advisory and the affected-version data, so you can decide whether this CVE reaches your setup. They are a guide, not a scan — your own configuration is the authority.

dbcve checks

Work through these to decide whether this CVE applies to you.

  1. Verify Apex One installation
    Check if Trend Micro Apex One client software is installed on the system by looking for the product in Add/Remove Programs or by checking for Apex One related processes or services.
    Affected if Apex One is installed on the system
  2. Determine installed Apex One version
    Locate the Apex One client version information. This is typically found in the product UI under About/Help, or in the Windows registry under HKLM\SOFTWARE\TrendMicro\Apex One, or by querying the installed product information.
    Affected if The installed version number is less than 14.0.11789 or matches version 2019
  3. Check Unauthorized Change Prevention service status
    Identify if the Unauthorized Change Prevention service (often related to the Self-Protection feature or Tmccc/TmPcc services in Apex One) is enabled. This can be checked in the Apex One console under Settings > Privileges and Access > Unauthorized Change Prevention, or via the service management console.
    Affected if The Unauthorized Change Prevention service is enabled and running
  4. Confirm current user context exposure
    Review whether the system allows low-privileged users to interact with the Apex One client or its components. Check if non-admin users have write access to Apex One installation directories or registry keys related to the service.
    Affected if Low-privileged users have measurable access to Apex One client components or service configurations

A system is affected if Apex One version is below 14.0.11789 (or is version 2019), the Unauthorized Change Prevention service is enabled, and an attacker could leverage existing low-privileged access to trigger the memory corruption for privilege escalation.

Generated from the published advisory. Verify against your own configuration.

Check your environment

Paste your version and any relevant configuration and it will be compared against the affected criteria above. Do not include secrets or credentials.

AI-assisted, checked against the advisory. Informational, not a guarantee.

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 14.0.11789 or later
Fixed in 14.0.11789
Interim mitigation

Apply the vendor-supplied security patch for Apex One and Apex One as a Service. Organizations should also review the principle of least privilege for user accounts and ensure attackers cannot easily achieve initial low-privileged code execution.

Recommended fix Moderate confidence

Apex One version 14.0.11789 or later

  1. 1. Identify the current version of Apex One installed on the system
  2. 2. Navigate to the Trend Micro Apex One admin console or use the local agent update feature
  3. 3. Initiate an upgrade to version 14.0.11789 or later
  4. 4. Verify the upgrade completed successfully by checking the new version number
  5. 5. Restart the Unauthorized Change Prevention service if not automatically restarted

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

Fix this in Apex One Scoped from the published advisory
  • Consultation2.0 h
  • Implementation3.0 h
  • Testing3.0 h
  • Review / QA2.0 h
10.0 hours of engineering $1,750
Get the upgrade done

An estimate, not a bill — we confirm scope with you before any work starts. Need it this week? Rush from $2,800.

Scan for this in your stack

Free · runs locally
dbcve dependency scanner

Check whether your project pulls in CVE-2022-44650 — 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-2022-44650 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