CVE-2024-20480
Cisco Ios Xe 16.1.1 … 17.9.5b
Raw vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:N/A:HCVSS and EPSS are reproduced from their sources (NVD, FIRST EPSS). Risk Priority is our own derived reading, not an NVD score.
Summary
CVE-2024-20480 is a high-severity Operator Precedence Logic Error (CWE-783) vulnerability in Cisco Ios Xe. Its CVSS base score is 8.6 (High).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Junk Data (T1001.001); ranked at the 46th 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 SA-11 (Developer Testing and Evaluation) and SA-15 (Development Process, Standards, and Tools) — see the control section below for these in your framework.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2024-18195
Vulnerability Data
A vulnerability in the DHCP Snooping feature of Cisco IOS XE Software on Software-Defined Access (SD-Access) fabric edge nodes could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to cause high CPU utilization on an affected device, resulting in a denial of service…
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(DoS) condition that requires a manual reload to recover. This vulnerability is due to improper handling of IPv4 DHCP packets. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending certain IPv4 DHCP packets to an affected device. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to cause the device to exhaust CPU resources and stop processing traffic, resulting in a DoS condition that requires a manual reload to recover.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI
Developer testing and static analysis directly find incorrect evaluation results caused by precedence mistakes.
Documented development standards and coding rules can require constructs that eliminate ambiguous operator precedence.
Engineering principles can mandate explicit parentheses and precedence rules that structurally prevent the logic error from being written.
Flaw identification and remediation processes can locate and correct control-flow errors once they manifest as incorrect runtime behavior.
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.
Secure SDLC practices (reviews, static analysis, testing) directly catch precedence errors while the control also addresses many other development risks.
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.8.25 mandates secure SDLC practices including secure coding guidelines, developer training, security checkpoints, and testing that reach operator precedence logic errors, but leaves a bounded remainder where implementation is incomplete or the specific defect slips through reviews and scans.
Secure coding standards and guidelines directly address operator precedence mistakes.
Security testing can detect logic errors caused by precedence issues.
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-670, a class-level weakness, and none of its children carries one either.