Cisco Intersight Virtual Appliance Privilege Escalation Vulnerability

published 2026-01-21 9mo ago modified 2026-06-17 4mo ago also EUVD-2026-3659

cvss: 6.0; version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev: Not listed; not in CISA's catalog
epss: 0.1%; EPSS 0.1% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 1%
public exploits: 0; none known

A vulnerability in the read-only maintenance shell of Cisco Intersight Virtual Appliance could allow an authenticated, local attacker with administrative privileges to elevate privileges to root on the virtual appliance.

This vulnerability is due to improper file permissions on configuration files for system accounts within the maintenance shell of the virtual appliance. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by accessing the maintenance shell as a read-only administrator and manipulating system files to grant root privileges. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to elevate their privileges to root on the virtual appliance and gain full control of the appliance, giving them the ability to access sensitive information, modify workloads and configurations on the host system, and cause a denial of service (DoS).

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CISA SSVC

Exploitation: none
Automatable: no
Technical impact: total
Assessed: 9mo ago (2026-01-22)

Exploit prediction

0.12% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 1% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by	version	score	vector
CNA	3.1	6.0	CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N

Affected products

Cisco Cisco Intersight Virtual Appliance

Classification

Weakness

CWE-732 Incorrect Permission Assignment for Critical Resource

References

sec.cloudapps.cisco.com /security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-intersight-privesc-p6tBm6jk

Sources

CVE List CVE-2026-20092
NVD CVE-2026-20092

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