CVE-2025-20185
Cisco Secure Email and Web Manager, Secure Email Gateway, and Secure Web Appliance Privilege Escalation Vulnerability
Description
A vulnerability in the implementation of the remote access functionality of Cisco AsyncOS Software for Cisco Secure Email and Web Manager, Cisco Secure Email Gateway, and Cisco Secure Web Appliance could allow an authenticated, local attacker to elevate privileges to root. The attacker must authenticate with valid administrator credentials. This vulnerability is due to an architectural flaw in the password generation algorithm for the remote access functionality. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by generating a temporary password for the service account. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to execute arbitrary commands as root and access the underlying operating system. Note: The Security Impact Rating (SIR) for this vulnerability is Medium due to the unrestricted scope of information that is accessible to an attacker.
Weakness: CWE-250
Affected products
| Vendor | Product | Category | Matched by |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cisco | Cisco Secure Email Gateway | Email Security | cna-assigner |
| Cisco | Cisco Secure Web Appliance | SASE / SSE / Secure Web | cna-assigner |
Vendor-reported products (3)
- Cisco · Cisco Secure Email
- Cisco · Cisco Secure Email and Web Manager
- Cisco · Cisco Secure Web Appliance
Vendor advisory
cisco-sa-esa-sma-wsa-multi-yKUJhS34
Cisco Secure Email and Web Manager, Secure Email Gateway, and Secure Web Appliance Vulnerabilities
Cisco’s rating: Medium (advisory CVSS 6.5) · Published Feb 5, 2025 · updated Feb 7, 2025 (revision 1.1)
Bug IDs: CSCwk70547 , CSCwk70559 , CSCwk70574 , CSCwk70576 , CSCwk70590 , CSCwk98506
The vendor’s rating applies to the whole advisory and can differ from this CVE’s own CVSS severity. Where this comes from