CVE-2025-20164: Cisco IOS

High severity, CVSS 8.3. EPSS: 0.3% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

A vulnerability in the Cisco Industrial Ethernet Switch Device Manager (DM) of Cisco IOS Software could allow an authenticated, remote attacker to elevate privileges. This vulnerability is due to insufficient validation of authorizations for authenticated users. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a crafted HTTP request to an affected device. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to elevate privileges to privilege level 15. To exploit this vulnerability, the attacker must have valid credentials for a user account with privilege level 5 or higher. Read-only DM users are assigned privilege level 5.

Affected products

• Cisco IOS: version 15.0(2)SE8 only; version 15.0(2)EA only; version 15.0(2)EA1 only; version 15.2(2)E only; version 15.2(2)E1 only; version 15.2(3)E1 only; …

Published 2025-05-07. Last modified 2026-06-17.