CVE-2023-20097: Cisco Aironet Access Point Software

Medium severity, CVSS 6.7. EPSS: 0.2% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

A vulnerability in Cisco access points (AP) software could allow an authenticated, local attacker to inject arbitrary commands and execute them with root privileges. This vulnerability is due to improper input validation of commands that are issued from a wireless controller to an AP. An attacker with Administrator access to the CLI of the controller could exploit this vulnerability by issuing a command with crafted arguments. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to gain full root access on the AP.

Affected products

• Cisco Aironet Access Point Software: before 17.9.0.135 (fixed in 17.9.0.135)
• Cisco IOS XE: before 16.12.8 (fixed in 16.12.8); from 17.1, before 17.3.6 (fixed in 17.3.6); from 17.4, before 17.6.5 (fixed in 17.6.5); from 17.7, before 17.9.2 (fixed in 17.9.2)
• Cisco Wireless Lan Controller Software: before 8.10.183.0 (fixed in 8.10.183.0)

Published 2023-03-23. Last modified 2026-06-17.