CVE-2023-20046: Cisco Staros

High severity, CVSS 8.8. EPSS: 0.9% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

A vulnerability in the key-based SSH authentication feature of Cisco StarOS Software could allow an authenticated, remote attacker to elevate privileges on an affected device. This vulnerability is due to insufficient validation of user-supplied credentials. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a valid low-privileged SSH key to an affected device from a host that has an IP address that is configured as the source for a high-privileged user account. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to log in to the affected device through SSH as a high-privileged user. There are workarounds that address this vulnerability.

Affected products

• Cisco Staros: before 21.22.14 (fixed in 21.22.14); from 21.23.0, before 21.23.31 (fixed in 21.23.31); from 21.25.0, before 21.25.15 (fixed in 21.25.15); from 21.26.0, before 21.26.17 (fixed in 21.26.17); from 21.27.0, before 21.27.6 (fixed in 21.27.6); from 21.28.0, before 21.28.3 (fixed in 21.28.3); …

Published 2023-05-09. Last modified 2026-06-17.