Threats / Cisco / CVE-2025-20281
CVE-2025-20281
· EUVD no mirror located
· GCVE no mirror located
Verified 2026-06-22
Cisco Identity Services Engine vulnerability
Cisco Identity Services Engine contains an injection vulnerability in its API due to insufficient input validation, allowing remote code execution and root privilege acquisition on affected devices.
Verdict
Today item — known-exploited.
An unauthenticated or low-privileged attacker can submit a crafted API request to exploit insufficient input validation, achieving remote code execution with root-level privileges on ISE and ISE-PIC deployments.
01
Is it exploitable?
— the evidence, ranked above the scoreExploit available
Fully weaponized — public exploit code is cataloged for this vulnerability.We link the existence of the exploit; we do not host or redistribute payloads.
Reported exploitation
47 independent public reports of in-the-wild exploitation are cataloged.Distinct reporting sources (vendor, incident response, government); open them for the underlying claims.
Exploited in the wild
Listed in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2025-07-28).
Probability (EPSS)
EPSS 0.96732 — modeled likelihood of exploitation activity.EPSS is a daily-changing model output — open the source for today's value.
Severity / affected
Affected: Cisco, Identity Services Engine. Confirm exact fixed builds in the vendor advisory.
Weakness (CWE)
Mapped to CWE-74 CWE-74 — weakness family: Injection.CWE assignment from the public NVD record; the weakness class drives how the flaw is exploited.
02
Who’s exploiting it?
— attribution turns risk into urgencyAttribution not established
No confirmed (advisory-backed) threat-actor attribution is established for this record. Absence of a named actor is not absence of compromise — see Coverage & confidence.
03
Why it matters
— the attack path, told twice: adversary, then board1
Front door — unauthenticated access narrative 1
Attacker
I craft a malicious API request containing injection payload targeting the vulnerable ISE endpoint.
Business
Identity and access control infrastructure becomes a direct attack surface for unauthorized code execution.
2
Keys to the kingdom — privilege/identity takeover narrative 2
Attacker
I submit the request and bypass input validation controls to execute arbitrary code on the target system.
Business
Attacker gains root-level access to critical authentication and policy enforcement systems.
3
Lateral reach — past segmentation narrative 3
Attacker
I establish persistent control and pivot through the compromised ISE instance to access connected network resources.
Business
Entire identity infrastructure and downstream systems become compromised, enabling lateral movement across the enterprise.
04
What to do
— defensible action- Remediate per the vendor advisory — confirm the fixed build for your version and verify exposure.1
Say it to the boardA vulnerability with this evidence profile is a defensible budget line, not a backlog ticket — fund the change against the proof above.
05