CVE-2025-20124Cisco Identity Services Engine Java Deserialization Vulnerability
- 9.9CriticalCVSS base score
- 18.5%Exploitation in 30 daysEPSS · top 2.7% of all CVEs
- NoKnown exploitednot in CISA's KEV catalog
- 1Public exploitsMetasploit, Nuclei and Exploit-DB
Description
A vulnerability in an API of Cisco ISE could allow an authenticated, remote attacker to execute arbitrary commands as the root user on an affected device. This vulnerability is due to insecure deserialization of user-supplied Java byte streams by the affected software. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a crafted serialized Java object to an affected API. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to execute arbitrary commands on the device and elevate privileges. Note: To successfully exploit this vulnerability, the attacker must have valid read-only administrative credentials. In a single-node deployment, new devices will not be able to authenticate during the reload time.
Public exploit
An exploit or proof of concept is public: anyone can try it against an unpatched system. The public collections list an Exploit-DB entry for it.
Show the exploits1
Exploit-DB1 entry
- Cisco ISE 3.0 - Remote Code Execution (RCE) (Exploit-DB entry) (opens in a new tab)
EDB-ID 52396remote, multiplepublished 11 Aug 2025Not verified
Modules, templates and exploits as listed by the Metasploit Framework (BSD-3-Clause), ProjectDiscovery's Nuclei templates (MIT) and the Exploit Database (GPLv2), read once a day. Where the data comes from
Timeline
ID reserved
By cisco
- 4 months later
· 4 months later
Published
- 13 months later
· 13 months 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) | 3.1 | Critical9.9 | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:L/I:H/A:H |
| NVDNVD · Analyzed | 3.1 | High7.2 | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H |
- EPSS (exploitation in 30 days)
- 18.5% · top 2.7% of all CVEs (14 Nov 2026)
- CISA SSVC
- Exploitation: none · Automatable: no · Technical impact: total
The list uses the assigner's score when there is one, then CISA's, then NVD's: Critical 9.9.
Affected products
Cisco · Cisco Identity Services Engine Software
- affected 3.0.0
- affected 3.0.0 p1
- affected 3.0.0 p2
- affected 3.0.0 p3
- affected 3.1.0
- affected 3.0.0 p4
- affected 3.1.0 p1
- affected 3.0.0 p5
- affected 3.1.0 p3
- affected 3.1.0 p2
- affected 3.0.0 p6
- affected 3.2.0
- affected 3.1.0 p4
- affected 2.7.0 p8
- affected 3.1.0 p5
- affected 3.2.0 p1
- affected 3.0.0 p7
- affected 3.1.0 p6
- affected 3.2.0 p2
- affected 3.1.0 p7
- affected 3.3.0
- affected 3.2.0 p3
- affected 3.0.0 p8
- affected 3.2.0 p4
- affected 3.1.0 p8
- affected 3.2.0 p5
- affected 3.2.0 p6
- affected 3.1.0 p9
- affected 3.3 Patch 2
- affected 3.3 Patch 1
- affected 3.3 Patch 3
Cisco · Cisco ISE Passive Identity Connector
- affected 3.0.0
- affected 3.2.0
- affected 3.1.0
- affected 3.3.0
What to do
Exploitation: The Cisco PSIRT is not aware of any public announcements or malicious use of the vulnerabilities that are described in this advisory.
References
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-2025-2152 (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-2025-20124)Record last updated .