Cisco has released patches for 35 vulnerabilities across several of its products. This includes 26 vulnerabilities that were part of the company’s semiannual IOS and IOS XE security advisory bundle. One of the most serious issues is a critical vulnerability, CVE-2025-20188, which affects the Out-of-Band Access Point (AP) image download feature in IOS XE software.
This flaw has a CVSS score of 10 out of 10. It could allow attackers to upload files, perform path traversal, and execute commands with root privileges without needing authentication. However, the feature is not enabled by default and only impacts certain Wireless LAN Controllers (WLCs).
The updates also fix 16 high-severity bugs in IOS and IOS XE software. These include issues that could lead to command injection (CVE-2025-20186), privilege escalation (CVE-2025-20164), and several denial of service conditions (CVE-2025-20154, CVE-2025-20182, and CVE-2025-20162).
Patching critical IOS XE flaws
The command injection and privilege escalation flaws require authentication to exploit, but the DoS vulnerabilities can be triggered remotely without authentication. Cisco’s patches also address medium-severity vulnerabilities in IOS that could enable cross-site request forgery attacks, allow bypassing traffic filters, permit reading or writing files, and cause DoS situations. Additional high-severity flaws were fixed in the management API of Catalyst Center and the CLI of Catalyst SD-WAN Manager.
These bugs could let attackers modify proxy settings and escalate privileges. Multiple medium-severity issues in both Catalyst Center and SD-WAN Manager were remediated as well. Cisco will not be releasing a patch for CVE-2025-20137, a medium-severity access control bypass in some Catalyst switch models, as the configuration needed to exploit it is unsupported.
While there are no known exploits in the wild for these vulnerabilities, proof-of-concept code exists for two of the medium-severity flaws (CVE-2025-20221 and CVE-2025-20147). Users should apply the available patches and workarounds as soon as possible to protect their systems. More details can be found in Cisco’s security advisories on their website.
Image Credits: Photo by Christopher Gower on Unsplash
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