Medium severity · published Jan 20, 2023
CVE-2023-20040
A vulnerability in the NETCONF service of Cisco Network Services Orchestrator (NSO) could allow an authenticated, remote attacker to cause a denial of service (DoS) on an affected…
5.5
CVSS
1.2%
EPSS
No
On KEV
Description
A vulnerability in the NETCONF service of Cisco Network Services Orchestrator (NSO) could allow an authenticated, remote attacker to cause a denial of service (DoS) on an affected system that is running as the root user. To exploit this vulnerability, the attacker must be a member of the admin group.
This vulnerability exists because user-supplied input is not properly validated when NETCONF is used to upload packages to an affected device. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by uploading a specially crafted package file. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to write crafted files to arbitrary locations on the filesystem or delete arbitrary files from the filesystem of an affected device, resulting in a DoS condition.
Note: By default, during install, Cisco NSO will be set up to run as the root user unless the --run-as-user option is used.
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:H
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
Low
Privileges
High
User interaction
None
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
Low
Availability
High
Scope
Unchanged
Exploitation
Is it being used?
Exploit prediction (EPSS)1.2% · higher than 69% of CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo evidence yet
CISA KEVNot listed
Ransomware campaign useNot known
Affected products
Which versions
NS
Network Services Orchestrator · Cisco
3.3 before 5.4.7; 5.5 before 5.5.6; 5.6 before 5.6.7; 5.7 before 5.7.4; 5.8 · source: NVD
References
NVD
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2023-20040
CVE.org
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2023-20040
Vendor Advisory
https://sec.cloudapps.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-nso-path-trvsl-zjBeMkZg
More from Network Services Orchestrator
10.0
CVE-2025-32433
Erlang/OTP SSH Vulnerable to Pre-Authentication RCE
8.8
CVE-2024-20381
A vulnerability in the JSON-RPC API feature in Cisco Crosswork Network Services Orchestrator (NSO) and ConfD that is used by the web-based management interfaces of Cisco Optical…
8.8
CVE-2018-0274
A vulnerability in the CLI parser of Cisco Network Services Orchestrator (NSO) could allow an authenticated, remote attacker to execute arbitrary shell commands with the…
7.8
CVE-2024-20366
A vulnerability in the Tail-f High Availability Cluster Communications (HCC) function pack of Cisco Crosswork Network Services Orchestrator (NSO) could allow an authenticated,…
7.8
CVE-2021-1572
A vulnerability in ConfD could allow an authenticated, local attacker to execute arbitrary commands at the level of the account under which ConfD is running, which is commonly…
