Cisco Secure Email and Web Manager, Secure Email Gateway, and Secure Web Appliance Privilege Escalation Vulnerability

published 2025-02-05 21 mo ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2025-2173

cvss: 3.4; version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev: Not listed; not in CISA's catalog
epss: 0.2%; EPSS 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 8%
public exploits: 0; none known

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.

CISA SSVC

Exploitation: none
Automatable: no
Technical impact: partial
Assessed: 21 mo ago (2025-02-05)

Exploit prediction

0.19% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 8% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by	version	score	vector
CNA	3.1	3.4	CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/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

Affected products

Cisco Cisco Secure Email
Cisco Cisco Secure Email and Web Manager
Cisco Cisco Secure Web Appliance

Classification

Weakness

CWE-250 Execution with Unnecessary Privileges

References

sec.cloudapps.cisco.com /security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-esa-sma-wsa-multi-yKUJhS34
vendor-advisory

Sources

CVE List CVE-2025-20185
NVD CVE-2025-20185

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Summary