An issue was discovered in Qualys Cloud Agent 4.8.0-49. It executes programs at various full pathnames without first making ownership and permission checks (e.g., to help ensure that a program was installed by root) and without integrity checks (e.g., a checksum comparison against known legitimate programs). Also, the vendor recommendation is to install this agent software with root privileges. Thus, privilege escalation is possible on systems where any of these pathnames is controlled by a non-root user. An example is /opt/firebird/bin/isql, where the /opt/firebird directory is often owned by the firebird user.
Conclusion & alert: CVE-2022-29549 is rated Low Risk (37.2/100): CVSS High severity, with low exploitation likelihood (EPSS 0.07%). Mandatory action: Monitor for updates and reassess as exploit intelligence or EPSS changes.
Risk is dynamic; we continuously reassess and refresh what is shown on this page as upstream context changes.
EPSS lead: Daily EPSS estimates relative likelihood of exploitation; percentile ranks this CVE among scored vulnerabilities (higher = more severe relative rank).
| # | Date | Old EPSS score | New EPSS score | Delta (New - Old) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2025-12-21 | 0.04% | 0.07% | +0.03% |
| 2 | 2025-09-15 | 0.06% | 0.04% | -0.02% |
| 3 | 2025-03-30 | — | 0.06% | — |
Full EPSS history (9 records total)
CVSS metrics for this CVE.
| Base score | Version | Severity | Vector | Exploitability | Impact | Score source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7.3 | 3.1 | HIGH |
|
1.3 | 5.9 | [email protected] |
| Vendor | Product | Version | Raw CPE |
|---|---|---|---|
| qualys | cloud_agent_for_linux | < 2.5.548.2 | cpe:2.3:a:qualys:cloud_agent_for_linux:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:* |
| URL | Tags |
|---|---|
| http://packetstormsecurity.com/files/168367/Qualys-Cloud-Agent-Arbitrary-Code-Execution.html | Third Party Advisory |
| http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2022/Sep/10 | Mailing List Third Party Advisory |
| http://software.firstworks.com/p/getting-started-with-firebird.html | Not Applicable |
| https://blog.qualys.com/product-tech/2022/08/15/qualys-security-updates-cloud-agent-for-linux | Vendor Advisory |
| https://blog.qualys.com/vulnerabilities-threat-research | Vendor Advisory |