CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2022-20721 — Cisco Ios Xe security vulnerability

Medium CVSS 6.8

Multiple vulnerabilities in the Cisco IOx application hosting environment on multiple Cisco platforms could allow an attacker to inject arbitrary commands into the underlying host operating system, execute arbitrary code on the underlying host operating system, install applications without being authenticated, or conduct a cross-site scripting (XSS) attack against a user of the affected software. For more information about these vulnerabilities, see the Details section of this advisory.

Severity
Medium
CVSS
6.8 (2.0)
Published
2022-04-15
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
operating-system
Weaknesses
CWE-22

Affected products

  • cisco / ios_xe / 16.3.1
  • cisco / ios_xe / 16.3.1a
  • cisco / ios_xe / 16.3.2
  • cisco / ios_xe / 16.3.3
  • cisco / ios_xe / 16.3.4
  • cisco / ios_xe / 16.3.5

Showing 6 representative product identities from 142 source matches. Confirm exact affected versions with the linked vendor and NVD evidence.

Matched remediation archetype

Path traversal, unsafe upload, and file handling

This catalog composition supplies bounded fallback guidance. Explicitly reviewed curated workflows load with the complete record below.

Check exposure

  • Trace untrusted filenames, archive entries, URLs, and path segments into read, write, include, extraction, and upload operations.
  • Identify filesystem roots, mount permissions, symbolic-link behavior, archive handling, and whether uploaded content is web-accessible or executable.
  • Review canonicalization and containment checks across supported operating systems and storage backends.

Remediate safely

  • Generate server-side storage identifiers and resolve paths beneath a fixed root using filesystem-aware containment checks.
  • Reject absolute, parent-relative, alternate-separator, device, link, and archive entries that escape the intended root.
  • Store uploads outside executable or served paths, validate type and size, and use private atomic temporary files.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

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