CVE-2023-20198

high-risk
Published 2023-10-16

Cisco is providing an update for the ongoing investigation into observed exploitation of the web UI feature in Cisco IOS XE Software. We are updating the list of fixed releases and adding the Software Checker. Our investigation has determined that the actors exploited two previously unknown issues. The attacker first exploited CVE-2023-20198 to gain initial access and issued a privilege 15 command to create a local user and password combination. This allowed the user to log in with normal user access. The attacker then exploited another component of the web UI feature, leveraging the new local user to elevate privilege to root and write the implant to the file system. Cisco has assigned CVE-2023-20273 to this issue. CVE-2023-20198 has been assigned a CVSS Score of 10.0. CVE-2023-20273 has been assigned a CVSS Score of 7.2. Both of these CVEs are being tracked by CSCwh87343.

Do I need to act?

!
94.0% chance of exploitation in next 30 days
EPSS score — higher than 6% of all CVEs
!
CISA KEV: actively exploited in the wild
On the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog — federal agencies must patch
?
Patch status unknown
Check vendor advisories for fix availability and mitigation guidance
10
CVSS 10.0/10 Critical
NETWORK / LOW complexity

Affected Products (3)

Affected Vendors

Cisco Rockwellautomation

References (3)

Mitigation https://sec.cloudapps.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/ci...
Mitigation https://sec.cloudapps.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/ci...
US Government Resource https://www.cisa.gov/known-exploited-vulnerabilities-catalog?field_cve=CVE-2023-...
69
/ 100
high-risk
Severity 33/34 · Critical
Exploitability 27/34 · High
Exposure 9/34 · Low