SOC status:Duty analyst on shift

UK Cyber Defence
VulnerabilityAnalyzed

CVE-2025-20141

A vulnerability in the handling of specific packets that are punted from a line card to a route processor in Cisco IOS XR Software Release 7.9.2 could allow an unauthenticated, adjacent attacker to cause control plane traffic to stop working on multiple…

HIGH 7.4EPSS 0.24%

Does this matter?

High impact if exploited, but EPSS currently rates exploitation as unlikely (0.24%). Schedule it in the normal patch cycle and watch for a rise in EPSS or a public exploit.

Description

A vulnerability in the handling of specific packets that are punted from a line card to a route processor in Cisco IOS XR Software Release 7.9.2 could allow an unauthenticated, adjacent attacker to cause control plane traffic to stop working on multiple Cisco IOS XR platforms.  This vulnerability is due to incorrect handling of packets that are punted to the route processor. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending traffic, which must be handled by the Linux stack on the route processor, to an affected device. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to cause control plane traffic to stop working, resulting in a denial of service (DoS) condition.

CVSS 3.1
7.4 HIGHCVSS:3.1/AV:A/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:N/A:H
EPSS
0.24% probability · 15th percentile
CISA KEV
Not listed
Weakness
CWE-770
Affected
cisco/ios xr
Source
psirt@cisco.com

Source: NVD record, EPSS from FIRST.org, KEV from CISA. Refreshed daily.