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

Description

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.

Timeline

Scores

EPSS (exploitation in 30 days)

0.19% · top 92% of all CVEs (12 Nov 2026)

CISA SSVC

Exploitation: none · Automatable: no · Technical impact: partial

The list uses the assigner's score when there is one, then CISA's, then NVD's: Low 3.4.

Affected products

• Cisco · Cisco Secure Email

  • affected 14.0.0-698
  • affected 13.5.1-277
  • affected 13.0.0-392
  • affected 14.2.0-620
  • affected 13.0.5-007
  • affected 13.5.4-038
  • affected 14.2.1-020
  • affected 14.3.0-032
  • affected 15.0.0-104
  • affected 15.0.1-030
  • affected 15.5.0-048
  • affected 15.5.1-055
  • affected 15.5.2-018
  • affected 15.0.3-002

• Cisco · Cisco Secure Email and Web Manager

  • affected 13.6.2-023
  • affected 13.6.2-078
  • affected 13.0.0-249
  • affected 13.0.0-277
  • affected 13.8.1-052
  • affected 13.8.1-068
  • affected 13.8.1-074
  • affected 14.0.0-404
  • affected 12.8.1-002
  • affected 14.1.0-227
  • affected 13.6.1-201
  • affected 14.2.0-203
  • affected 14.2.0-212
  • affected 12.8.1-021
  • affected 13.8.1-108
  • affected 14.2.0-224
  • affected 14.3.0-120
  • affected 15.0.0-334
  • affected 15.5.1-024
  • affected 15.5.1-029
  • affected 15.5.2-005

• Cisco · Cisco Secure Web Appliance

  • affected 11.8.0-453
  • affected 12.5.3-002
  • affected 12.0.3-007
  • affected 12.0.3-005
  • affected 14.1.0-032
  • affected 14.1.0-047
  • affected 14.1.0-041
  • affected 12.0.4-002
  • affected 14.0.2-012
  • affected 11.8.0-414
  • affected 12.0.1-268
  • affected 11.8.1-023
  • affected 11.8.3-021
  • affected 11.8.3-018
  • affected 12.5.1-011
  • affected 11.8.4-004
  • affected 12.5.2-007
  • affected 12.5.2-011
  • affected 14.5.0-498
  • affected 12.5.4-005
  • affected 12.5.4-011
  • affected 12.0.5-011
  • affected 14.0.3-014
  • affected 12.5.5-004
  • affected 12.5.5-005
  • affected 12.5.5-008
  • affected 14.0.4-005
  • affected 14.5.1-008
  • affected 14.5.1-016
  • affected 15.0.0-355
  • affected 15.0.0-322
  • affected 12.5.6-008
  • affected 15.1.0-287
  • affected 14.5.2-011
  • affected 15.2.0-116
  • affected 14.0.5-007
  • affected 15.2.0-164
  • affected 14.5.1-510
  • affected 12.0.2-012
  • affected 12.0.2-004
  • and 13 more

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.

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-2025-2173 (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

[![CVE-2025-20185](https://cveledger.app/badge/CVE-2025-20185.svg)](https://cveledger.app/cve/CVE-2025-20185)

Record last updated 5 Feb 2025, 16:59 UTC.