CVE-2020-3165Cisco NX-OS Software Border Gateway Protocol MD5 Authentication Bypass Vulnerability
- 8.2HighCVSS base score
- 1.6%Exploitation in 30 daysEPSS · top 24% of all CVEs
- NoKnown exploitednot in CISA's KEV catalog
- NonePublic exploitsnone known yet
Description
A vulnerability in the implementation of Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) Message Digest 5 (MD5) authentication in Cisco NX-OS Software could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to bypass MD5 authentication and establish a BGP connection with the device. The vulnerability occurs because the BGP MD5 authentication is bypassed if the peer does not have MD5 authentication configured, the NX-OS device does have BGP MD5 authentication configured, and the NX-OS BGP virtual routing and forwarding (VRF) name is configured to be greater than 19 characters. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by attempting to establish a BGP session with the NX-OS peer. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to establish a BGP session with the NX-OS device without MD5 authentication. The Cisco implementation of the BGP protocol accepts incoming BGP traffic only from explicitly configured peers. To exploit this vulnerability, an attacker must send the malicious packets over a TCP connection that appears to come from a trusted BGP peer. To do so, the attacker must obtain information about the BGP peers in the affected system’s trusted network.
Timeline
ID reserved
By cisco
- 3 months later
· 3 months later
Published
- 5 years later
· 5 years later
Record updated
Changes after publication (a new score, a public exploit, EPSS crossing 1, 10 or 50 %, leaving KEV) are kept since November 2026; earlier ones are not known.
Scores
| Scored by | CVSS | Score | Vector |
|---|---|---|---|
| ciscoCNA (assigner) | 3.0 | High8.2 | CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:H/A:N |
| NVDNVD · Modified | 3.1 | High8.2 | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:H/A:N |
- EPSS (exploitation in 30 days)
- 1.6% · top 24% of all CVEs (14 Nov 2026)
- CISA SSVC
- Exploitation: none · Automatable: yes · Technical impact: partial
The list uses the assigner's score when there is one, then CISA's, then NVD's: High 8.2.
Affected products
- affected 9.2(1)
What to do
Exploitation: The Cisco Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) is not aware of any public announcements or malicious use of the vulnerability that is described in this advisory.
References
References1
- 20200226 Cisco NX-OS Software Border Gateway Protocol MD5 Authentication Bypass Vulnerability (opens in a new tab)vendor-advisoryx_refsource_CISCOx_transferred
Sources
The same CVE in the primary databases and aggregators, to check against.
- CVE.org record (opens in a new tab)
- CVE List JSON (GitHub) (opens in a new tab)
- NVD (opens in a new tab)
- FIRST EPSS (opens in a new tab)
- EUVD EUVD-2020-24436 (opens in a new tab)
- OSV.dev (opens in a new tab)
- GitHub Advisories (opens in a new tab)
- CIRCL Vulnerability-Lookup (opens in a new tab)
Badge for a README or a ticket
[](https://cveledger.app/cve/CVE-2020-3165)Record last updated .