CVE-2026-20180
CriticalCVSS 9.9Exploitation Probability (EPSS)
Very high risk92th percentile — higher than 92% of all known CVEs
Summary
A vulnerability in Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) allows an authenticated remote attacker to execute arbitrary commands on the underlying OS. The attacker needs at least Read Only Admin credentials and sends a crafted HTTP request.
Risk Assessment
Successful exploitation can lead to user-level OS access, privilege escalation to root, and in single-node deployments, a denial of service (DoS) condition where unauthenticated endpoints cannot access the network until the node is restored.
Recommendation
Apply the patches provided by Cisco immediately and restrict access to the ISE management interface to trusted IP addresses only.
Original NVD description (English source)
A vulnerability in Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) could allow an authenticated, remote attacker to execute arbitrary commands on the underlying operating system of an affected device. To exploit this vulnerability, the attacker must have at least Read Only Admin credentials. This vulnerability is due to insufficient validation of user-supplied input. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a crafted HTTP request to an affected device. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to obtain user-level access to the underlying operating system and then elevate privileges to root. In single-node ISE deployments, successful exploitation of these vulnerabilities could cause the affected ISE node to become unavailable, resulting in a denial of service (DoS) condition. In that condition, endpoints that have not already authenticated would be unable to access the network until the node is restored.