Cyber Posture

CVE-2025-20209

High

Published: 12 March 2025

Published
12 March 2025
Modified
01 August 2025
KEV Added
Patch
CVSS Score 7.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
EPSS Score 0.0056 68.5th percentile
Risk Priority 15 60% EPSS · 20% KEV · 20% CVSS

Description

Adversaries may exploit software vulnerabilities that can cause an application or system to crash and deny availability to users.

Security Summary

CVE-2025-20209 is a vulnerability in the Internet Key Exchange version 2 (IKEv2) function of Cisco IOS XR Software. It arises from improper handling of malformed IKEv2 packets, which could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to prevent an affected device from processing any control plane UDP packets, resulting in a denial-of-service (DoS) condition. The vulnerability has a CVSS v3.1 base score of 7.5 (AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H) and is associated with CWE-770 (Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling).

An unauthenticated, remote attacker can exploit this vulnerability by sending malformed IKEv2 packets to an affected device. Successful exploitation would disrupt the device's ability to process control plane UDP packets, leading to a DoS condition that impacts network operations reliant on those packets.

Cisco has released software updates that address this vulnerability, as detailed in their security advisory. There are no workarounds available to mitigate the issue.

Details

CWE(s)
CWE-770

Affected Products

cisco
ios xr
24.1.1, 24.1.2, 24.2.1, 24.2.11, 6.5.1

MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques

T1499.004 Application or System Exploitation Impact
Adversaries may exploit software vulnerabilities that can cause an application or system to crash and deny availability to users.
Why these techniques?

The CVE describes remote unauthenticated exploitation of malformed IKEv2 packets causing DoS via improper resource handling in the application, directly mapping to application or system exploitation for endpoint denial of service.

Confidence: HIGH · MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise v19.0

References