CVE-2022-35819 in Azure Site Recovery VMWare to Azure
Summary
by MITRE • 08/10/2022
Azure Site Recovery Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability. This CVE ID is unique from CVE-2022-35774, CVE-2022-35775, CVE-2022-35780, CVE-2022-35781, CVE-2022-35782, CVE-2022-35783, CVE-2022-35784, CVE-2022-35785, CVE-2022-35786, CVE-2022-35787, CVE-2022-35788, CVE-2022-35789, CVE-2022-35790, CVE-2022-35791, CVE-2022-35799, CVE-2022-35800, CVE-2022-35801, CVE-2022-35802, CVE-2022-35807, CVE-2022-35808, CVE-2022-35809, CVE-2022-35810, CVE-2022-35811, CVE-2022-35812, CVE-2022-35813, CVE-2022-35814, CVE-2022-35815, CVE-2022-35816, CVE-2022-35817, CVE-2022-35818.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 09/04/2022
The Azure Site Recovery service represents a critical component within Microsoft's cloud infrastructure, providing disaster recovery capabilities for virtual machines and physical servers across on-premises and cloud environments. This service enables organizations to replicate workloads to Azure or other target locations, ensuring business continuity and data protection during catastrophic events or system failures. The vulnerability identified as CVE-2022-35819 specifically targets the privilege escalation mechanisms within this recovery service, creating a significant security risk for organizations relying on Azure Site Recovery for their disaster recovery operations.
This elevation of privilege vulnerability stems from inadequate access control validation within the Azure Site Recovery service implementation. The flaw allows authenticated attackers with limited privileges to escalate their permissions and gain unauthorized access to additional system resources or administrative capabilities. The vulnerability exists in the service's authorization logic where proper validation checks fail to adequately verify user permissions before granting access to sensitive operations or resources. This technical weakness creates a pathway for malicious actors to bypass intended security boundaries and potentially compromise the entire disaster recovery infrastructure.
The operational impact of CVE-2022-35819 extends beyond simple privilege escalation, as it could enable attackers to manipulate recovery plans, access protected backup data, or even disrupt the availability of disaster recovery services. Organizations using Azure Site Recovery for mission-critical applications face heightened risk of data breaches or service interruptions when this vulnerability is exploited. The attack surface includes not only the direct recovery operations but also any associated management interfaces or integration points that rely on the service's authentication mechanisms. Security teams must consider that this vulnerability could be leveraged as a stepping stone for more extensive attacks within the cloud environment, potentially leading to lateral movement or data exfiltration.
Mitigation strategies for this vulnerability should prioritize immediate patching of affected Azure Site Recovery components, ensuring that all instances are updated with the latest security fixes from Microsoft. Organizations should implement additional monitoring of authentication and authorization events within their Azure environments, particularly focusing on unusual privilege escalation patterns or access attempts to recovery-related services. Network segmentation and principle of least privilege enforcement can help limit the potential impact of exploitation, while regular security assessments should verify that proper access controls remain in place. The vulnerability aligns with CWE-284, which addresses improper access control in software systems, and could potentially map to ATT&CK techniques related to privilege escalation and persistence within cloud environments. Organizations should also review their Azure role-based access control configurations to ensure that administrative privileges are properly restricted and that the principle of minimal required permissions is enforced across all recovery service operations.