CVE-2023-20273

unknown KEV

Published 2023-10-23 · Modified 2023-10-23

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CVSS v3

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CVSS v4 NEW

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not yet in upstream

VIR risk

2.5

Description

Cisco IOS XE contains a command injection vulnerability in the web user interface. When chained with CVE-2023-20198, the attacker can leverage the new local user to elevate privilege to root and write the implant to the file system. Cisco identified CVE-2023-20273 as the vulnerability exploited to deploy the implant. CVE-2021-1435, previously associated with the exploitation events, is no longer believed to be related to this activity.

CISA KEV

Vendor: Cisco
Product: Cisco IOS XE Web UI
Due date: 2023-10-27

Predictions

Exploit likelihood

99%

Patch ETA

—

Heuristic predictions, AS-IS, for prioritization only.

Mitigations

No mitigations published for this CVE yet.

The vendor-content worker queues fetches as references arrive (check back in a few minutes). Or — if you've already worked around this in production — publish your fix to the community-verified tier.

✚ Propose a mitigation on Community → Mitigations published via the community go through AI scoring + 2 human reviewers + 7-day silent objection window before landing here with source_tier=community-verified.

Exploits

Public proof-of-concept code below. AS-IS, for defenders and authorised testing only.

Metasploit modules

auxiliary_admin/http/cisco_ios_xe_os_exec_cve_2023_20273 rank 300

Cisco IOX XE unauthenticated OS command execution

Source code queued for fetch — refresh in a moment.

exploit_linux/misc/cisco_ios_xe_rce rank 600

Cisco IOX XE Unauthenticated RCE Chain

Source code queued for fetch — refresh in a moment.

References

https://sec.cloudapps.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-iosxe-webui-privesc-j22SaA4z; https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2023-20273

Community-verified mitigations for this CVE will appear above when contributors publish them.

Verify integrity in audit chain (admin only). AS-IS.