CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2020-3210 — Cisco Ios security vulnerability

High CVSS 7.2

A vulnerability in the CLI parsers of Cisco IOS Software for Cisco 809 and 829 Industrial Integrated Services Routers (Industrial ISRs) and Cisco 1000 Series Connected Grid Routers (CGR1000) could allow an authenticated, local attacker to execute arbitrary shell commands on the Virtual Device Server (VDS) of an affected device. The attacker must have valid user credentials at privilege level 15. The vulnerability is due to insufficient validation of arguments that are passed to specific VDS-related CLI commands. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by authenticating to the targeted device and including malicious input as the argument of an affected command. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to execute arbitrary commands in the context of the Linux shell of VDS with the privileges of the root user.

Severity
High
CVSS
7.2 (2.0)
Published
2020-06-03
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
operating-system
Weaknesses
CWE-77, CWE-78

Affected products

  • cisco / ios / 12.2(60)ez16
  • cisco / ios / 15.0(2)sg11a
  • cisco / ios / 15.3(3)jaa1
  • cisco / ios / 15.3(3)jpj
  • cisco / ios / 15.9(3)m
  • cisco / ios / 15.9(3)m0a

Matched remediation archetype

Command, code, expression, and template injection

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Check exposure

  • Trace untrusted values to process execution, interpreters, evaluators, template engines, dynamic imports, and administrative scripting features.
  • Determine whether the affected path is reachable across each trust boundary and which service account or host privilege it inherits.
  • Review configuration for optional execution features, unsafe compatibility modes, and shell invocation.

Remediate safely

  • Replace string-built commands or evaluated code with fixed operations and structured argument APIs that do not invoke a shell.
  • Use strict allowlists for operation identifiers and reject unexpected input before it reaches any interpreter.
  • Update the affected component and add inert regression tests covering metacharacters, encoding variants, and alternate request paths.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

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