Cisco IOS and IOS XE Software Privilege Escalation Vulnerability

published 2021-03-24 5 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2021-6858

cvss: 5.1; version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev: Not listed; not in CISA's catalog
epss: 0.3%; EPSS 0.3% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 24%
public exploits: 0; none known

A vulnerability in the dragonite debugger of Cisco IOS XE Software could allow an authenticated, local attacker to escalate from privilege level 15 to root privilege. The vulnerability is due to the presence of development testing and verification scripts that remained on the device. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by bypassing the consent token mechanism with the residual scripts on the affected device. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to escalate from privilege level 15 to root privilege.

CISA SSVC

Exploitation: none
Automatable: no
Technical impact: partial
Assessed: 2 y ago (2024-11-08)

Exploit prediction

0.32% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 24% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by	version	score	vector
CNA	3.1	5.1	CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:H/A:N
NVD	3.1	6.7	CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD	2.0	7.2	AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C

Affected products

Cisco Cisco IOS

Classification

Weakness

CWE-489 Active Debug Code

Technology feeds

Cisco IOS rss critical rss

References

tools.cisco.com /security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-XE-FSM-Yj8qJbJc
vendor-advisory

Sources

CVE List CVE-2021-1391
NVD CVE-2021-1391

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Summary