CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2025-20196 — Cisco Ios Xe security vulnerability

Medium CVSS 5.3

A vulnerability in the Cisco IOx application hosting environment of Cisco IOS Software and Cisco IOS XE Software could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to cause the Cisco IOx application hosting environment to stop responding, resulting in a denial of service (DoS) condition. This vulnerability is due to the improper handling of HTTP requests. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending crafted HTTP requests to an affected device. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to cause the Cisco IOx application hosting environment to stop responding. The IOx process will need to be manually restarted to recover services.

Severity
Medium
CVSS
5.3 (3.1)
Published
2025-05-07
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
operating-system
Weaknesses
CWE-307

Affected products

  • cisco / ios_xe / 16.1.1
  • cisco / ios_xe / 16.1.2
  • cisco / ios_xe / 16.1.3
  • cisco / ios_xe / 16.2.1
  • cisco / ios_xe / 16.2.2
  • cisco / ios_xe / 16.3.1

Showing 6 representative product identities from 144 source matches. Confirm exact affected versions with the linked vendor and NVD evidence.

Matched remediation archetype

Authentication bypass and missing authentication

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

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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