Impact
The vulnerability is caused by insufficient validation of user‑supplied input in the command‑line interface of Cisco Catalyst SD‑WAN products, a weakness identified as CWE‑116. An attacker who has local netadmin credentials can upload a specially crafted file, allowing arbitrary command execution with root privileges. This privilege escalation can be used to alter the device configuration and push unauthorized settings to connected edge devices, jeopardizing confidentiality, integrity, and availability.
Affected Systems
Affected components include Cisco Catalyst SD‑WAN Controller (formerly vSmart) and Cisco Catalyst SD‑WAN Manager (formerly vManage) with the 20.12.7 release, as identified by the CPE list. The SD‑WAN Validator (formerly vBond) is referenced in the advisory but no specific version is listed; only the 20.12.7 build is explicitly cited as affected. No other versions are confirmed to be vulnerable based on the supplied data.
Risk and Exploitability
The advisory assigns a CVSS score of 7.8, indicating high severity, and an EPSS score of 10%. The vulnerability is listed in the CISA KEV catalog. Exploitation requires authenticated, local netadmin access; no remote attack vectors or other methods have been reported. Without valid netadmin credentials, the risk to a system is low, but if an attacker gains such access, privilege escalation to root is possible and could compromise the entire SD‑WAN deployment.
OpenCVE Enrichment