CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2023-20136 — Cisco Secure Workload security vulnerability

Medium CVSS 6.5

A vulnerability in the OpenAPI of Cisco Secure Workload could allow an authenticated, remote attacker with the privileges of a read-only user to execute operations that should require Administrator privileges. The attacker would need valid user credentials. This vulnerability is due to improper role-based access control (RBAC) of certain OpenAPI operations. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by issuing a crafted OpenAPI function call with valid credentials. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to execute OpenAPI operations that are reserved for the Administrator user, including the creation and deletion of user labels.

Severity
Medium
CVSS
6.5 (3.1)
Published
2023-06-28
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
software/application
Weaknesses
CWE-648, CWE-269

Affected products

  • cisco / secure_workload

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

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