CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2023-20049 — Cisco Ios Xr security vulnerability

High CVSS 8.6

A vulnerability in the bidirectional forwarding detection (BFD) hardware offload feature of Cisco IOS XR Software for Cisco ASR 9000 Series Aggregation Services Routers, ASR 9902 Compact High-Performance Routers, and ASR 9903 Compact High-Performance Routers could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to cause a line card to reset, resulting in a denial of service (DoS) condition. This vulnerability is due to the incorrect handling of malformed BFD packets that are received on line cards where the BFD hardware offload feature is enabled. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a crafted IPv4 BFD packet to an affected device. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to cause line card exceptions or a hard reset, resulting in loss of traffic over that line card while the line card reloads.

Severity
High
CVSS
8.6 (3.1)
Published
2023-03-09
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
operating-system
Weaknesses
CWE-805, CWE-119

Affected products

  • cisco / ios_xr
  • cisco / ios_xr / 7.7

Showing 2 representative product identities from 3 source matches. Confirm exact affected versions with the linked vendor and NVD evidence.

Matched remediation archetype

Buffer bounds, memory safety, and memory corruption

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

Check exposure

  • Identify affected native-code versions, build flags, architectures, parsers, codecs, drivers, and input paths in all shipped artifacts.
  • Determine whether untrusted data reaches the affected routine and the process privilege, sandbox, and network exposure.
  • Confirm statically linked, vendored, firmware, and platform-provided copies, not only package-manager records.

Remediate safely

  • Apply the maintained upstream correction or replace the affected component, then rebuild every dependent artifact from clean inputs.
  • Adopt bounds-checked interfaces, validated sizes and integer conversions, clear ownership, and memory-safe components where practical.
  • Enable supported compiler and runtime hardening and add sanitized tests and fuzz regression seeds derived from non-weaponized fixtures.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

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