CVE Vulnerabilities

CVE-2025-20153

Improper Access Control

Published: Feb 19, 2025 | Modified: Feb 19, 2025
CVSS 3.x
N/A
Source:
NVD
CVSS 2.x
RedHat/V2
RedHat/V3
Ubuntu

A vulnerability in the email filtering mechanism of Cisco Secure Email Gateway could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to bypass the configured rules and allow emails that should have been denied to flow through an affected device.  

This vulnerability is due to improper handling of email that passes through an affected device. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a crafted email through the affected device. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to bypass email filters on the affected device.

Weakness

The product does not restrict or incorrectly restricts access to a resource from an unauthorized actor.

Extended Description

Access control involves the use of several protection mechanisms such as:

When any mechanism is not applied or otherwise fails, attackers can compromise the security of the product by gaining privileges, reading sensitive information, executing commands, evading detection, etc. There are two distinct behaviors that can introduce access control weaknesses:

Potential Mitigations

  • Compartmentalize the system to have “safe” areas where trust boundaries can be unambiguously drawn. Do not allow sensitive data to go outside of the trust boundary and always be careful when interfacing with a compartment outside of the safe area.
  • Ensure that appropriate compartmentalization is built into the system design, and the compartmentalization allows for and reinforces privilege separation functionality. Architects and designers should rely on the principle of least privilege to decide the appropriate time to use privileges and the time to drop privileges.

References