CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2025-20264 — Cisco Identity Services Engine security vulnerability

Medium CVSS 6.4

A vulnerability in the web-based management interface of Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) could allow an authenticated, remote attacker to bypass the authorization mechanisms for specific administrative functions. This vulnerability is due to insufficient authorization enforcement mechanisms for users created by SAML SSO integration with an external identity provider. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by submitting a series of specific commands to an affected device. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to modify a limited number of system settings, including some that would result in a system restart. In single-node Cisco ISE deployments, devices that are not authenticated to the network will not be able to authenticate until the Cisco ISE system comes back online. 

Severity
Medium
CVSS
6.4 (3.1)
Published
2025-06-25
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
software/application
Weaknesses
CWE-285

Affected products

  • cisco / identity_services_engine / 3.0.0
  • cisco / identity_services_engine / 3.1.0

Showing 2 representative product identities from 35 source matches. Confirm exact affected versions with the linked vendor and NVD evidence.

Matched remediation archetype

Authorization bypass, IDOR, and cross-tenant access

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

Check exposure

  • Map object and action authorization checks across API, UI, batch, import/export, and background-job paths.
  • Identify tenant, ownership, role, and policy boundaries for affected resources and administrative operations.
  • Use synthetic fixtures to compare intended access matrices without accessing another user's real data.

Remediate safely

  • Enforce server-side authorization at each resource access and state transition using the authenticated principal and trusted tenant context.
  • Scope data queries by tenant and ownership; treat client-supplied identifiers, roles, and policy claims as untrusted.
  • Add deny-by-default policy tests for horizontal and vertical access across every affected transport.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

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