Cyber Resilience

CVE-2025-20196

Cisco Ios Xe ≤ 17.15.2

Published
07 May 2025
Modified
17 June 2026
Patch / advisory
View advisory
CVSS Score v3.1 5.3
Click a component to see what it means
Raw vectorCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L
EPSS Score 0.0040 33th percentile
Risk Priority 44 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-2025-20196 is a medium-severity Improper Restriction of Excessive Authentication Attempts (CWE-307) vulnerability in Cisco Ios Xe. Its CVSS base score is 5.3 (Medium).

Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Brute Force (T1110); ranked at the 33th 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-7 (Unsuccessful Logon Attempts) — see the control section below for these in your framework.

OWASP Top 10 for Web (2025)

A07:2025 Authentication Failures

EU & UK References

Vulnerability Data

A vulnerability in the Cisco IOx application hosting environment of Cisco IOS Software and Cisco IOS XE Software could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to cause the Cisco IOx application hosting environment to stop responding, resulting in a denial of…

more

service (DoS) condition. This vulnerability is due to the improper handling of HTTP requests. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending crafted HTTP requests to an affected device. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to cause the Cisco IOx application hosting environment to stop responding. The IOx process will need to be manually restarted to recover services.

CWE(s)
CWE-307

Related Threats

MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques

T1110 Brute Force Credential Access
Adversaries may use brute force techniques to gain access to accounts when passwords are unknown or when password hashes are obtained.
attack.mitre.org →
T1110.001 Password Guessing Credential Access
Adversaries with no prior knowledge of legitimate credentials within the system or environment may guess passwords to attempt access to accounts.
attack.mitre.org →
T1110.003 Password Spraying Credential Access
Adversaries may use a single or small list of commonly used passwords against many different accounts to attempt to acquire valid account credentials.
attack.mitre.org →
T1110.004 Credential Stuffing Credential Access
Adversaries may use credentials obtained from breach dumps of unrelated accounts to gain access to target accounts through credential overlap.
attack.mitre.org →
T1078 Valid Accounts Stealth
Adversaries may obtain and abuse credentials of existing accounts as a means of gaining Initial Access, Persistence, Privilege Escalation, or Defense Evasion.
attack.mitre.org →
Derived from this CVE’s CWE(s) via the direct CWE→ATT&CK cross-walk.

CVEs Like This One

CVE-2024-20259Same product: Cisco Catalyst 9100
CVE-2023-20056Same product: Cisco Catalyst 9100
CVE-2023-20097Same product: Cisco Catalyst 9100
CVE-2023-20112Same product: Cisco Catalyst 9105Ax
CVE-2023-37635Shared CWE-307
CVE-2023-41270Shared CWE-307
CVE-2026-31904Shared CWE-307
CVE-2020-37228Shared CWE-307
CVE-2024-23106Shared CWE-307
CVE-2023-26208Shared CWE-307

Affected Assets

cisco
ios xe
16.1.1, 16.1.2, 16.1.3, 16.2.1, 16.2.2 · ≤ 17.15.2
cisco
cgr1000 firmware
≤ 15.9\(3\)m12
cisco
ir510 wpan firmware
all versions
cisco
ic3000 industrial compute gateway firmware
≤ 1.5.2
cisco
807 industrial integrated services router firmware
≤ 15.9\(3\)m11
cisco
809 industrial integrated services router firmware
≤ 15.9\(3\)m11
cisco
829 industrial integrated services router firmware
≤ 15.9\(3\)m11

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 800-53 r5) AI

AC-7 Unsuccessful Logon Attempts good match

AC-7 directly enforces limits on consecutive failed logons, structurally blocking brute-force exploitation of the weakness.

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-03 mostly match
prevents

Authentication enforcement directly includes lockout, throttling, and MFA policies that prevent brute-force attempts.

DE.CM-03 partial match
prevents

Behavioral monitoring of authentication activity can detect excessive failed attempts after they occur.

PR.PS-04 partial match
prevents

Generating auth logs enables later detection or forensics but does not itself restrict attempts.

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.8.5 Secure authentication partial match
prevents

CAPTCHA, account lock-out after repeated failures, and alerts on excessive attempts directly stop automated brute-force guessing of credentials.

Hardening callouts derived

Configuration rules from DISA STIG baselines that bear on weaknesses of the type cited by this CVE. Each rule is shown with the relationship its mapping actually records, against the CWE it was authored against. Derived via CVE→CWE over `controls_xwalks` (authoritative rows only; rows rated `none` are excluded).

RHEL 7 (2 rules)
  • V-204427 The Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system must be configured to lock accounts for a minimum of 15 minutes after three unsuccessful logon attempts within a 15-minute timeframe. prevents CWE-307
  • V-204428 The Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system must lock the associated account after three unsuccessful root logon attempts are made within a 15-minute period. prevents CWE-307

References