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.
Classification
CVE ID: CVE-2025-20185
CVSS Base Severity: LOW
CVSS Base Score: 3.4
CVSS Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:N
Affected Products
Vendor: Cisco
Product: Cisco Secure Email
Exploit Prediction Scoring System (EPSS)
EPSS Score: 0.04% (probability of being exploited)
EPSS Percentile: 11.85% (scored less or equal to compared to others)
EPSS Date: 2025-03-06 (when was this score calculated)