CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2022-20732 — Cisco Virtualized Infrastructure Manager security vulnerability

High CVSS 7.8

A vulnerability in the configuration file protections of Cisco Virtualized Infrastructure Manager (VIM) could allow an authenticated, local attacker to access confidential information and elevate privileges on an affected device. This vulnerability is due to improper access permissions for certain configuration files. An attacker with low-privileged credentials could exploit this vulnerability by accessing an affected device and reading the affected configuration files. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to obtain internal database credentials, which the attacker could use to view and modify the contents of the database. The attacker could use this access to the database to elevate privileges on the affected device.

Severity
High
CVSS
7.8 (3.1)
Published
2022-04-21
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
software/application
Weaknesses
CWE-284, CWE-276

Affected products

  • cisco / virtualized_infrastructure_manager

Matched remediation archetype

Privilege escalation and unsafe privilege management

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

Check exposure

  • Map service accounts, operating-system identities, roles, capabilities, impersonation, set-user transitions, and administrative helper paths.
  • Determine whether untrusted users or lower-privilege processes can reach the affected transition or modify inputs it trusts.
  • Review file, socket, registry, device, job, container, and cloud-role permissions used before and after privilege changes.

Remediate safely

  • Apply the supported fix and redesign privileged operations as a minimal, authenticated, allowlisted interface.
  • Drop privileges before processing untrusted input, verify the drop succeeds, and remove unnecessary roles, capabilities, and write permissions.
  • Validate ownership and permissions at time of use and add explicit lower-to-higher privilege boundary tests.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

The detailed catalog view below loads this exact record, its source evidence, and the full seven-phase agentic change plan.