CVE-2023-20040: Cisco Network Services Orchestrator

Medium severity, CVSS 5.5. EPSS: 1.2% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

A vulnerability in the NETCONF service of Cisco Network Services Orchestrator (NSO) could allow an authenticated, remote attacker to cause a denial of service (DoS) on an affected system that is running as the root user. To exploit this vulnerability, the attacker must be a member of the admin group. This vulnerability exists because user-supplied input is not properly validated when NETCONF is used to upload packages to an affected device. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by uploading a specially crafted package file. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to write crafted files to arbitrary locations on the filesystem or delete arbitrary files from the filesystem of an affected device, resulting in a DoS condition. Note: By default, during install, Cisco NSO will be set up to run as the root user unless the --run-as-user option is used.

Affected products

• Cisco Network Services Orchestrator: from 3.3, before 5.4.7 (fixed in 5.4.7); from 5.5, before 5.5.6 (fixed in 5.5.6); from 5.6, before 5.6.7 (fixed in 5.6.7); from 5.7, before 5.7.4 (fixed in 5.7.4); version 5.8 only

Published 2023-01-20. Last modified 2026-06-17.