Cyber Resilience

CVE-2025-20153

Medium

Published: 19 February 2025

Published
19 February 2025
Modified
31 July 2025
KEV Added
Patch
CVSS Score v3.1 5.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:L/A:N
EPSS Score 0.0013 32.5th percentile
Risk Priority 12 60% EPSS · 20% KEV · 20% CVSS

Summary

CVE-2025-20153 is a medium-severity Improper Access Control (CWE-284) vulnerability in Cisco Secure Email Gateway. Its CVSS base score is 5.8 (Medium).

Operationally, ranked at the 32.5th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

EU & UK References

Vulnerability details

A vulnerability in the email filtering mechanism of Cisco Secure Email Gateway could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to bypass the configured rules and allow emails that should have been denied to flow through an affected device.   This vulnerability…

more

is due to improper handling of email that passes through an affected device. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a crafted email through the affected device. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to bypass email filters on the affected device.

CWE(s)

Related Threats

No named actor attribution yet. ATT&CK technique mapping in progress for this CVE.

Affected Assets

cisco
secure email gateway
13.0.0-392, 13.0.5-007, 13.5.1-277, 13.5.4-038, 14.0.0-698

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.

addresses: CWE-284

The access control policy and procedures directly mandate and enforce proper access control mechanisms across the organization.

addresses: CWE-284

Device lock enforces restricted access until re-authentication, directly reducing unauthorized use of active sessions.

addresses: CWE-284

Supervision and review of access control activities directly detects and remediates improper access configurations or usages.

addresses: CWE-284

Explicitly identifying and documenting actions permitted without identification or authentication enforces proper access control boundaries by defining justified exceptions.

addresses: CWE-284

By automatically labeling outputs with security attributes, the control supports attribute-based enforcement and reduces exploitability of improper access control weaknesses.

addresses: CWE-284

Associating and retaining security attributes with data directly supports enforcement of access control decisions across storage, processing, and transmission.

addresses: CWE-284

Requiring prior authorization for each remote access type prevents improper access control over remote connections.

addresses: CWE-284

Requiring authorization of wireless access before allowing connections enforces proper access control for this access method.

References