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Fencer Intel
low 3.4

CVE-2025-20185 json

Cisco Secure Email and Web Manager, Secure Email Gateway, and Secure Web Appliance Privilege Escalation Vulnerability

published last yr. modified 4mo ago also EUVD-2025-2173

cvss
3.4
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.2%
EPSS 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 8%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

A vulnerability in the implementation of the remote access functionality of Cisco AsyncOS Software for Cisco Secure Email and Web Manager, Cisco Secure Email Gateway, and Cisco Secure Web Appliance could allow an authenticated, local attacker to elevate privileges to root. The attacker must authenticate with valid administrator credentials.

This vulnerability is due to an architectural flaw in the password generation algorithm for the remote access functionality. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by generating a temporary password for the service account. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to execute arbitrary commands as root and access the underlying operating system. Note: The Security Impact Rating (SIR) for this vulnerability is Medium due to the unrestricted scope of information that is accessible to an attacker.

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CISA SSVC

Exploitation
none
Automatable
no
Technical impact
partial
Assessed
last yr.

Exploit prediction

0.19% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 8% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 3.4 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:N
NVD 3.1 6.7 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Affected products

  • Cisco Cisco Secure Email
  • Cisco Cisco Secure Email and Web Manager
  • Cisco Cisco Secure Web Appliance

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-250 Execution with Unnecessary Privileges

References

Sources

Fencer Intel keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.