CVE Vulnerabilities

CVE-2025-20124

Deserialization of Untrusted Data

Published: Feb 05, 2025 | Modified: Mar 28, 2025
CVSS 3.x
7.2
HIGH
Source:
NVD
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
CVSS 2.x
RedHat/V2
RedHat/V3
Ubuntu

A vulnerability in an API of Cisco ISE could allow an authenticated, remote attacker to execute arbitrary commands as the root user on an affected device.

This vulnerability is due to insecure deserialization of user-supplied Java byte streams by the affected software. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a crafted serialized Java object to an affected API. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to execute arbitrary commands on the device and elevate privileges. Note: To successfully exploit this vulnerability, the attacker must have valid read-only administrative credentials. In a single-node deployment, new devices will not be able to authenticate during the reload time.

Weakness

The product deserializes untrusted data without sufficiently ensuring that the resulting data will be valid.

Affected Software

Name Vendor Start Version End Version
Identity_services_engine Cisco * 3.1 (excluding)
Identity_services_engine Cisco 3.1.0 (including) 3.1.0 (including)
Identity_services_engine Cisco 3.1.0-patch1 (including) 3.1.0-patch1 (including)
Identity_services_engine Cisco 3.1.0-patch2 (including) 3.1.0-patch2 (including)
Identity_services_engine Cisco 3.1.0-patch3 (including) 3.1.0-patch3 (including)
Identity_services_engine Cisco 3.1.0-patch4 (including) 3.1.0-patch4 (including)
Identity_services_engine Cisco 3.1.0-patch5 (including) 3.1.0-patch5 (including)
Identity_services_engine Cisco 3.1.0-patch6 (including) 3.1.0-patch6 (including)
Identity_services_engine Cisco 3.1.0-patch7 (including) 3.1.0-patch7 (including)
Identity_services_engine Cisco 3.1.0-patch8 (including) 3.1.0-patch8 (including)
Identity_services_engine Cisco 3.1.0-patch9 (including) 3.1.0-patch9 (including)
Identity_services_engine Cisco 3.2.0 (including) 3.2.0 (including)
Identity_services_engine Cisco 3.2.0-patch1 (including) 3.2.0-patch1 (including)
Identity_services_engine Cisco 3.2.0-patch2 (including) 3.2.0-patch2 (including)
Identity_services_engine Cisco 3.2.0-patch3 (including) 3.2.0-patch3 (including)
Identity_services_engine Cisco 3.2.0-patch4 (including) 3.2.0-patch4 (including)
Identity_services_engine Cisco 3.2.0-patch5 (including) 3.2.0-patch5 (including)
Identity_services_engine Cisco 3.2.0-patch6 (including) 3.2.0-patch6 (including)
Identity_services_engine Cisco 3.3.0 (including) 3.3.0 (including)
Identity_services_engine Cisco 3.3.0-patch1 (including) 3.3.0-patch1 (including)
Identity_services_engine Cisco 3.3.0-patch2 (including) 3.3.0-patch2 (including)
Identity_services_engine Cisco 3.3.0-patch3 (including) 3.3.0-patch3 (including)

Potential Mitigations

  • Make fields transient to protect them from deserialization.
  • An attempt to serialize and then deserialize a class containing transient fields will result in NULLs where the transient data should be. This is an excellent way to prevent time, environment-based, or sensitive variables from being carried over and used improperly.

References