CVE-2019-1385 — Microsoft
HIGHCVE-2019-1385 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.8) CWE-59 vulnerability. It is in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2022-05-23) and has been used in ransomware campaigns — treat it as actively exploited and patch now. No vendor fix is recorded yet; mitigation options are listed below.
An elevation of privilege vulnerability exists when the Windows AppX Deployment Extensions improperly performs privilege management, resulting in access to system files.To exploit this…
Exploitation Status
Actively exploited in the wild
- Confirmed by CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on 2022-05-23 — including use in ransomware campaigns. Federal agencies were required to remediate by 2022-06-13.
- A successful exploit gives an attacker total control of the affected component, not partial access.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA (KEV catalog and SSVC triage) for CVE-2019-1385.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2019-1385 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). Outside the shaded patch-first corner.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 394,803 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.
Description
An elevation of privilege vulnerability exists when the Windows AppX Deployment Extensions improperly performs privilege management, resulting in access to system files.To exploit this vulnerability, an authenticated attacker would need to run a specially crafted application to elevate privileges.The security update addresses the vulnerability by correcting how AppX Deployment Extensions manages privileges., aka 'Windows AppX Deployment Extensions Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability'.
Affected Products
windows 10 1709microsoftwindows 10 1803microsoftwindows 10 1809microsoftwindows 10 1903microsoftwindows server 2016microsoftwindows server 2019microsoftResearch use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.
Detection & mitigation playbook
VulnerabilityDetect
Identify every host running the affected component and compare the installed build against the fixed version below — for source-built or distro-packaged software the version string, not a lockfile, is the source of truth (`dpkg -l`, `rpm -q`, or the binary's own `--version`).
Remediation status
No fixed release is recorded for CVE-2019-1385 yet. Track the upstream advisory, and apply the exposure-reduction steps below in the meantime.
Mitigate without a patch
Close the privilege gap rather than the entry point: audit which accounts, roles and service identities can reach the affected operation, drop the component to the least privilege it actually needs, and review file and directory permissions created by earlier installs — a default left in place is what makes this reachable.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2019-1385 in your dependencies?
Find it across , including transitive dependencies.