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🛡️ CVE-2026-20273 — ios-xe

🟠 CVSS 8.6 — High ✅ No Known Exploit CWE-20 NVD
8.6
CVSS Score
0 Low4 Medium7 High9 Critical10

Description

As part of Cisco's ongoing commitment to proactive security and product quality, the Cisco IOS XE Software engineering team has conducted a comprehensive internal security review. This review resulted in a software hardening release that addresses multiple internally discovered vulnerabilities.

The vulnerabilities tracked by CVE-2026-20273 are related to improper input validation issues that are grouped under the Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE) Pillar CWE-20.

How this vulnerability can be exploited

This issue can be reached over the network, attack complexity is low, an attacker needs no privileges on the target. No user interaction is required. The scope is changed, meaning a successful attack can affect components beyond the vulnerable one. Rated impact: confidentiality none, integrity none, availability high.

CVSS metrics in full

The score comes from this vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:N/A:H

  • Attack vector: Network — reachable from anywhere that can route to the service.
  • Attack complexity: Low — the attack works reliably, with no preparation.
  • Privileges required: None — an unauthenticated stranger can try it.
  • User interaction: None — nobody has to be tricked into anything.
  • Scope: Changed — a successful attack reaches components beyond the vulnerable one.
  • Confidentiality impact: None.
  • Integrity impact: None.
  • Availability impact: High — total loss, or loss the attacker controls.

Weakness class

CVE-2026-20273 is classified as CWE-20: Improper Input Validation. The application accepts input without checking that it has the expected form, so malformed values reach code that assumes they are well formed.

Affected software

CVE-2026-20273 is recorded against 1 package.

  • ios-xe

Timeline and source

Published on 5 August 2026 and last revised on 17 August 2026. No public exploit is currently recorded for this entry. Record sourced from NVD.

References

sec.cloudapps.cisco.com
www.cve.org

Other advisories for this package

ios-xe has other advisories on record. If you are patching this one, these are worth checking on the same host:

Same weakness in other software

These advisories are the same class of weakness (CWE-20: Improper Input Validation) in other software:

Details

Severity HIGH
CVSS Score 8.6
CVSS Vector CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:N/A:H
CWE CWE-20
Public Exploit ✅ No
Source NVD
Published 2026-08-05
Updated 2026-08-20
Modified 2026-08-17
Fix URL N/A

Affected Packages

Software From version Fixed in
ios-xe — —

Similar Threats

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ⓘ Data Notice: The information presented above has been compiled from publicly available internet sources. Boteraser aggregates this data solely for informational purposes and does not independently classify, evaluate, or endorse any findings about the vulnerabilities listed. The accuracy and completeness of this information is the sole responsibility of the original publishers. Boteraser and its operators accept no liability for any decisions made based on this data.

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