CVE-2023-20171
Cisco Identity Services Engine 3.1 … 3.2
Raw vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:NCVSS and EPSS are reproduced from their sources (NVD, FIRST EPSS). Risk Priority is our own derived reading, not an NVD score.
Summary
CVE-2023-20171 is a medium-severity Client-Side Enforcement of Server-Side Security (CWE-602) vulnerability in Cisco Identity Services Engine. Its CVSS base score is 5.4 (Medium).
Operationally, ranked at the 31th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
OWASP Top 10 for Web (2025)
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2023-24350
Vulnerability Data
Multiple vulnerabilities in Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) could allow an authenticated attacker to delete or read arbitrary files on the underlying operating system. To exploit these vulnerabilities, an attacker must have valid credentials on an affected device. For more…
more
information about these vulnerabilities, see the Details section of this advisory.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
CVEs Like This One
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.
Security testing and developer training directly verify and enforce proper input validation, reducing exploitability of injection and malformed-data weaknesses.
Security testing and evaluation at multiple SDLC stages directly detects missing or flawed input validation, with the required remediation process ensuring fixes are applied.
Directly implements checks on information inputs to reject invalid data before processing.
Spam protection mechanisms perform filtering and detection on inbound/outbound messages, directly compensating for missing or weak input validation of unsolicited content.
Mitigating Controls (ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Annex A) AI
Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→ISO cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.
Secure development lifecycle mandates server-side validation and prevents reliance on client enforcement.
Application security requirements explicitly call for server-side enforcement of security mechanisms.
Secure architecture principles discourage client-side trust but do not directly address this weakness.
Secure coding standards require server-side checks and reject client-only enforcement.
Security testing can detect client-side enforcement but is not the primary mitigation.
Information access restriction is undermined when the client is trusted to enforce it.
Hardening callouts derived
DISA STIG baselines are authored against specific weaknesses. Where this CVE cites a broad weakness class, the mapping is not asserted at that abstraction (owner ruling, 2026-09-25: grade only at Base and below), so no rule is shown here rather than a rule shown against the wrong grain.
- No fine-grained STIG row for CWE-602, a class-level weakness, and none of its children carries one either.
- No fine-grained STIG row for CWE-20, a class-level weakness, and none of its children carries one either.