A vulnerability in the NETCONF service of Cisco Network Services Orchestrator (NSO) could allow an authenticated, remote attacker to cause…

published 2023-01-19 3 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2023-24219

cvss: 5.5; version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev: Not listed; not in CISA's catalog
epss: 1.3%; EPSS 1.3% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 70%
public exploits: 0; none known

A vulnerability in the NETCONF service of Cisco Network Services Orchestrator (NSO) could allow an authenticated, remote attacker to cause a denial of service (DoS) on an affected system that is running as the root user. To exploit this vulnerability, the attacker must be a member of the admin group. This vulnerability exists because user-supplied input is not properly validated when NETCONF is used to upload packages to an affected device. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by uploading a specially crafted package file. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to write crafted files to arbitrary locations on the filesystem or delete arbitrary files from the filesystem of an affected device, resulting in a DoS condition. Note: By default, during install, Cisco NSO will be set up to run as the root user unless the --run-as-user option is used.

Patch / fix

fixed in 1

cisco network_services_orchestrator 5.4.7, 5.5.6, 5.6.7, 5.7.4

Exploit prediction

1.28% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 70% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by	version	score	vector
CNA	3.1	5.5	CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:H
NVD	3.1	5.5	CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:H

Affected products

Cisco Cisco Network Services Orchestrator

Classification

Weakness

CWE-23 Relative Path Traversal
CWE-434 Unrestricted Upload of File with Dangerous Type

References

sec.cloudapps.cisco.com /security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-nso-path-trvsl-zjBeMkZg
vendor-advisory

Sources

CVE List CVE-2023-20040
NVD CVE-2023-20040

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Summary