How severe is CVE-2022-42948?

CVE-2022-42948 has a CVSS 3.1 base score of 9.8 (CRITICAL). EPSS estimates a 2.7% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days. It is listed in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog.

CVE-2022-42948: Fortra Cobalt Strike User Interface Remote Code

CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities

Fortra Cobalt Strike User Interface Remote Code Execution Vulnerability is confirmed as actively exploited and is listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

Added to KEV

2023-03-30

Remediation due

2023-04-20

Required action
Apply updates per vendor instructions.

CISA notes
https://www.cobaltstrike.com/blog/out-of-band-update-cobalt-strike-4-7-2/; https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2022-42948

Description

Cobalt Strike 4.7.1 fails to properly escape HTML tags when they are displayed on Swing components. By injecting crafted HTML code, it is possible to remotely execute code in the Cobalt Strike UI.

Severity

CVSS 3.1 · CISA9.8 CRITICAL

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

SSVC · CISA-ADP

Exploitationactive

Automatableyes

Technical impacttotal

Exploitation Context

as of October 14, 2026

All KEV statistics→

CISA added CVE-2022-42948 to the KEV catalog 6 days after its CVE record was published. The median for entries added in 2023 is 12 days.
It is one of 4 Fortra entries in the CISA KEV catalog, and one of 3 added in 2023.
Its current EPSS score (2.7%) is higher than that of 11% of CISA KEV entries.

Affected Products

Vendor	Product	Affected versions
-	-	n/a

References

3 Links

Other references

Record Details

Published

2023-03-24

Last updated

2025-10-21

Assigner (CNA)

mitre

Credited to

CVE record data © The MITRE Corporation, used under the CVE Terms of Use. Exploited-in-the-wild data from the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (CC0). Exploit prediction scores by FIRST EPSS (first.org/epss). This site is not endorsed or certified by MITRE, NVD, CISA, or FIRST.