Cyber Resilience

CVE-2022-20846

Medium

Published: 15 November 2024

Published
15 November 2024
Modified
05 August 2025
KEV Added
Patch
CVSS Score v3.1 4.3 CVSS:3.1/AV:A/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L
EPSS Score 0.0198 83.9th percentile
Risk Priority 10 60% EPSS · 20% KEV · 20% CVSS

Summary

CVE-2022-20846 is a medium-severity Classic Buffer Overflow (CWE-120) vulnerability in Cisco Ios Xr. Its CVSS base score is 4.3 (Medium).

Operationally, ranked in the top 16.1% of CVEs by exploit likelihood; it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

EU & UK References

Vulnerability details

A vulnerability in the Cisco Discovery Protocol implementation for Cisco IOS XR Software could allow an unauthenticated, adjacent attacker to cause the Cisco Discovery Protocol process to reload on an affected device. This vulnerability is due to a heap buffer overflow in certain…

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Cisco Discovery Protocol messages. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a malicious Cisco Discovery Protocol packet to an affected device. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to cause a heap overflow, which could cause the Cisco Discovery Protocol process to reload on the device. The bytes that can be written in the buffer overflow are restricted, which limits remote code execution.Note: Cisco Discovery Protocol is a Layer 2 protocol. To exploit this vulnerability, an attacker must be in the same broadcast domain as the affected device (Layer 2 adjacent).  Cisco has released software updates that address this vulnerability. There are no workarounds that address this vulnerability.This advisory is part of the September 2022 release of the Cisco IOS XR Software Security Advisory Bundled Publication. For a complete list of the advisories and links to them, see .

CWE(s)

Related Threats

No named actor attribution yet. ATT&CK technique mapping in progress for this CVE.

Affected Assets

cisco
ios xr
6.5.1, 6.5.15, 6.5.2, 6.5.25, 6.5.26

Mitigating Controls

Likely Mitigating Controls AI

Per-CVE control mapping for this CVE has not run yet; the list below is derived from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry.

addresses: CWE-120

Platform-independent managed code eliminates the need for unchecked native buffer copies that are the root cause of classic buffer overflows.

References