Security Resilience

CVE-2024-20301

Auth Bypass in Cisco Duo Authentication For Windows Logon And Rdp 4.2.0 – 4.3.0

Published
06 March 2024
Modified
17 June 2026
Patch / advisory
CVSS Score v3.1 6.2
Click a component to see what it means
Raw vectorCVSS:3.1/AV:P/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
EPSS Score 0.0027 17th percentile
Risk Priority 45 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-2024-20301 is a medium-severity Improper Authentication (CWE-287) vulnerability in Cisco Duo Authentication For Windows Logon And Rdp. Its CVSS base score is 6.2 (Medium).

Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Data Obfuscation (T1001); ranked at the 17th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

The strongest mitigations our analysis identified map to AC-12 (Session Termination) and IA-2 (Identification and Authentication (Organizational Users)) — see the control section below for these in your framework.

OWASP Top 10 for Web (2025)

EU & UK References

Vulnerability Data

A vulnerability in Cisco Duo Authentication for Windows Logon and RDP could allow an authenticated, physical attacker to bypass secondary authentication and access an affected Windows device. This vulnerability is due to a failure to invalidate locally created trusted sessions…

more

after a reboot of the affected device. An attacker with primary user credentials could exploit this vulnerability by attempting to authenticate to an affected device. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to access the affected device without valid permissions.

CWE(s)

Related Threats

MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques

T1001 Data Obfuscation Command And Control
Adversaries may obfuscate command and control traffic to make it more difficult to detect.
T1003 OS Credential Dumping Credential Access
Adversaries may attempt to dump credentials to obtain account login and credential material, normally in the form of a hash or a clear text password.
T1003.001 LSASS Memory Credential Access
Adversaries may attempt to access credential material stored in the process memory of the Local Security Authority Subsystem Service (LSASS).
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.
T1007 System Service Discovery Discovery
Adversaries may try to gather information about registered local system services.
T1011.001 Exfiltration Over Bluetooth Exfiltration
Adversaries may attempt to exfiltrate data over Bluetooth rather than the command and control channel.
Derived from this CVE’s CWE(s) via the direct CWE→ATT&CK cross-walk.

CVEs Like This One

CVE-2024-20292Same product: Cisco Duo Authentication For Windows Logon And Rdp
CVE-2023-20123Same product: Cisco Duo Authentication For Windows Logon And Rdp
CVE-2023-20199Same vendor: Cisco
CVE-2026-20182Same vendor: Cisco
CVE-2026-20127Same vendor: Cisco
CVE-2026-27968Shared CWE-287, CWE-613
CVE-2025-20160Same vendor: Cisco
CVE-2026-83540Shared CWE-287, CWE-613
CVE-2019-1937Same vendor: Cisco
CVE-2023-20238Same vendor: Cisco

Affected Assets

cisco
duo authentication for windows logon and rdp
4.2.0 — 4.3.0

Mitigating Controls

Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI

AC-12 directly requires automatic session termination after a defined period, structurally preventing reuse of expired session identifiers.

Mandates unique identification and authentication of organizational users before access, directly stopping improper authentication.

Requires unique identification and authentication of devices before establishing connections, preventing unauthenticated device claims.

Mandates unique identification and authentication of non-organizational users, directly addressing the weakness for external actors.

Manages authenticators with verification and secure distribution, reducing opportunities for improper authentication.

Enforces access only after approved authorizations, which presupposes correct authentication has occurred.

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.AA-01 partial match
blocks

Credential lifecycle management directly includes enforcing session expiration to prevent reuse.

PR.AA-03 partial match
blocks

Authentication mechanisms can incorporate session timeout checks but do not inherently address expiration policy.

PR.AA-05 partial match
blocks

Authorization policy enforcement and review covers terminating stale sessions to limit access scope.

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.

removes
removes
blocks

Mandating segregated approval and oversight for non-human identities reduces the chance that weak or orphaned credentials can be exploited for unauthorized authentication.

blocks

A.5.17 directly mandates generation of non-guessable unique secrets, secure transmission, immediate change of defaults/temporary creds, strong password enforcement, no-reuse, and compromise response, which stops most improper-authentication exploits at source; the bounded remainder is non-password authentication methods and sufficiency-of-proof cases (e.g. IA-2/IA-5 enhancements) left to other controls.

removes
removes

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-287, a class-level weakness. Rules are authored against its narrower children: CWE-295, CWE-306.

References