Security Resilience

CVE-2023-20226

Cisco Ios Xe 17.10.1 … 17.9.2a

Published
27 September 2023
Modified
21 November 2024
Patch / advisory
View advisory
CVSS Score v3.1 8.6
Click a component to see what it means
Raw vectorCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:N/A:H
EPSS Score 0.0094 60th percentile
Risk Priority 63 floored blend · peak EPSS

CVSS and EPSS are reproduced from their sources (NVD, FIRST EPSS). Risk Priority is our own derived reading, not an NVD score.

Summary

CVE-2023-20226 is a high-severity Missing Initialization of a Variable (CWE-456) vulnerability in Cisco Ios Xe. Its CVSS base score is 8.6 (High).

Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Steganography (T1001.002); ranked in the top 40% of CVEs by exploit likelihood; it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

EU & UK References

Vulnerability Data

A vulnerability in Application Quality of Experience (AppQoE) and Unified Threat Defense (UTD) on Cisco IOS XE Software could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to cause an affected device to reload unexpectedly, resulting in a denial of service (DoS) condition.…

more

This vulnerability is due to the mishandling of a crafted packet stream through the AppQoE or UTD application. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a crafted packet stream through an affected device. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to cause the device to reload, resulting in a DoS condition.

CWE(s)
CWE-456NVD-CWE-noinfo

Related Threats

MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques

T1001.002 Steganography Command And Control
Adversaries may use steganographic techniques to hide command and control traffic to make detection efforts more difficult.
attack.mitre.org →
T1001.003 Protocol or Service Impersonation Command And Control
Adversaries may impersonate legitimate protocols or web service traffic to disguise command and control activity and thwart analysis efforts.
attack.mitre.org →
T1003.005 Cached Domain Credentials Credential Access
Adversaries may attempt to access cached domain credentials used to allow authentication to occur in the event a domain controller is unavailable.
attack.mitre.org →
T1003.007 Proc Filesystem Credential Access
Adversaries may gather credentials from the proc filesystem or `/proc`.
attack.mitre.org →
T1003.008 /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow Credential Access
Adversaries may attempt to dump the contents of <code>/etc/passwd</code> and <code>/etc/shadow</code> to enable offline password cracking.
attack.mitre.org →
T1007 System Service Discovery Discovery
Adversaries may try to gather information about registered local system services.
attack.mitre.org →
Derived from this CVE’s CWE(s) via the direct CWE→ATT&CK cross-walk.

CVEs Like This One

CVE-2023-20227Same product: Cisco 1100-4G Integrated Services Router
CVE-2023-20027Same product: Cisco 1100-4G Integrated Services Router
CVE-2022-20775Same product: Cisco 1100-4G Integrated Services Router
CVE-2023-20035Same product: Cisco 4221 Integrated Services Router
CVE-2017-12232Same product: Cisco 1100-4G Integrated Services Router
CVE-2017-12319Same product: Cisco 1100-4G Integrated Services Router
CVE-2019-16012Same product: Cisco 1100-4G Integrated Services Router
CVE-2018-0154Same product: Cisco 1100-4G Integrated Services Router
CVE-2017-12237Same product: Cisco 1100-4G Integrated Services Router
CVE-2018-0179Same product: Cisco 1100-4G Integrated Services Router

Affected Assets

cisco
ios xe
17.10.1, 17.10.1a, 17.7.1, 17.7.1a, 17.7.2

Mitigating Controls

Control response

Prevent
Stop it (NIST 800-53)

—

Detect
Catch it (NIST detect / respond)

—

Harden
Shrink the surface (DISA STIG)
  • 2 hardening rules · 1 OS baseline
Validate
Prove the fix (OWASP ASVS)

—

Mitigating Controls (NIST CSF 2.0) AI

Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→CSF cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.

PR.PS-06 partial match
blocks

Secure SDLC practices directly require static analysis and coding standards that enforce variable initialization.

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.

A.5.14 Information transfer partial match
removes
A.5.15 Access control partial match
removes
A.5.16 Identity management partial match
removes
A.5.17 Authentication information partial match
removes
A.5.18 Access rights partial match
removes
A.8.10 Information deletion partial match
removes

References