CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2024-20262 — A vulnerability in the Secure Copy Protocol (SCP) and SFTP feature of Cisco IOS XR Software could allow an authenticated, local...

Medium CVSS 6.5

A vulnerability in the Secure Copy Protocol (SCP) and SFTP feature of Cisco IOS XR Software could allow an authenticated, local attacker to create or overwrite files in a system directory, which could lead to a denial of service (DoS) condition. The attacker would require valid user credentials to perform this attack. This vulnerability is due to a lack of proper validation of SCP and SFTP CLI input parameters. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by authenticating to the device and issuing SCP or SFTP CLI commands with specific parameters. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to impact the functionality of the device, which could lead to a DoS condition. The device may need to be manually rebooted to recover. Note: This vulnerability is exploitable only when a local user invokes SCP or SFTP commands at the Cisco IOS XR CLI. A local user with administrative privileges could exploit this vulnerability remotely.

Severity
Medium
CVSS
6.5 (3.1)
Published
2024-03-13
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
software/application
Weaknesses
CWE-269

Affected products

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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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