CVE-2022-20864: Cisco IOS XE Rom Monitor

Medium severity, CVSS 4.6. EPSS: 0.3% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

A vulnerability in the password-recovery disable feature of Cisco IOS XE ROM Monitor (ROMMON) Software for Cisco Catalyst Switches could allow an unauthenticated, local attacker to recover the configuration or reset the enable password. This vulnerability is due to a problem with the file and boot variable permissions in ROMMON. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by rebooting the switch into ROMMON and entering specific commands through the console. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to read any file or reset the enable password.

Affected products

• Cisco IOS XE Rom Monitor: affected versions not specified

Published 2022-10-10. Last modified 2026-06-17.