Cisco IOS XE Software Tool Command Language Privilege Escalation Vulnerability

published 2022-04-15 4 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2022-25926

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 20%
public exploits: 0; none known

A vulnerability in the Tool Command Language (Tcl) interpreter of Cisco IOS XE Software could allow an authenticated, local attacker to escalate from privilege level 15 to root-level privileges. This vulnerability is due to insufficient input validation of data that is passed into the Tcl interpreter. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by loading malicious Tcl code on an affected device. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to execute arbitrary commands as root. By default, Tcl shell access requires privilege level 15.

Exploit prediction

0.28% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 20% 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 XE Software

Classification

Weakness

CWE-250 Execution with Unnecessary Privileges
CWE-20 Improper Input Validation

Technology feeds

Cisco IOS rss critical rss

References

tools.cisco.com /security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-iosxe-priv-esc-grbtubU
vendor-advisory

Sources

CVE List CVE-2022-20676
NVD CVE-2022-20676

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Summary