CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2022-20773 — Cisco Umbrella Virtual Appliance security vulnerability

High CVSS 7.5

A vulnerability in the key-based SSH authentication mechanism of Cisco Umbrella Virtual Appliance (VA) could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to impersonate a VA. This vulnerability is due to the presence of a static SSH host key. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by performing a man-in-the-middle attack on an SSH connection to the Umbrella VA. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to learn the administrator credentials, change configurations, or reload the VA. Note: SSH is not enabled by default on the Umbrella VA.

Severity
High
CVSS
7.5 (3.1)
Published
2022-04-21
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
software/application
Weaknesses
CWE-321, CWE-798

Affected products

  • cisco / umbrella_virtual_appliance

Matched remediation archetype

Authentication bypass and missing authentication

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Check exposure

  • Map every affected endpoint and protocol path, including alternate ports, legacy routes, recovery flows, service accounts, and machine-to-machine access.
  • Confirm which deployments enable the affected authentication mode and whether the interface is reachable from untrusted networks.
  • Review session, token, credential, and proxy trust configuration without attempting account takeover.

Remediate safely

  • Apply the supported fix and centralize fail-closed authentication before protected request handling.
  • Remove default or embedded credentials, rotate affected secrets and sessions, and bind authentication decisions to the intended audience and channel.
  • Add negative tests for alternate routes, malformed or absent credentials, recovery flows, and proxy-derived identity.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

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