CVE-2023-20160
Published: 18 May 2023
Summary
CVE-2023-20160 is a high-severity Classic Buffer Overflow (CWE-120) vulnerability in Cisco Business 250-16P-2G Firmware. Its CVSS base score is 8.6 (High).
Operationally, ranked in the top 15.4% of CVEs by exploit likelihood; it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
Deeper analysis
Multiple vulnerabilities affect the web-based user interface of certain Cisco Small Business Series Switches. They stem from improper validation of requests sent to the interface and are tracked under CWE-120. An unauthenticated remote attacker can trigger a denial of service condition or obtain arbitrary code execution with root privileges, reflected in the CVSS 8.6 score emphasizing high availability impact over the network without credentials.
An unauthenticated remote attacker can send crafted requests to the switch web interface to crash the device or execute code at root level, achieving full control or persistent denial of service on affected hardware.
The Cisco Security Advisory cisco-sa-sg-web-multi-S9g4Nkgv details the issues and is the authoritative source for mitigation steps and affected firmware versions. The associated EPSS score reached a peak of 0.0531 but has since receded to 0.0213 with no reported real-world exploitation campaigns noted in the provided data.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2023-24339
Vulnerability details
Multiple vulnerabilities in the web-based user interface of certain Cisco Small Business Series Switches could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to cause a denial of service (DoS) condition or execute arbitrary code with root privileges on an affected device. These…
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vulnerabilities are due to improper validation of requests that are sent to the web interface. For more information about these vulnerabilities, see the Details section of this advisory.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
No named actor attribution yet. ATT&CK technique mapping in progress for this CVE.
Affected Assets
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.
Platform-independent managed code eliminates the need for unchecked native buffer copies that are the root cause of classic buffer overflows.