Cisco ISE Vulnerability Allows Remote Attackers to Execute Malicious Command

Cisco has issued urgent security patches addressing two critical vulnerabilities in its Identity Services Engine (ISE) and ISE Passive Identity Connector (ISE-PIC) platforms.

These flaws, which both carry the highest possible CVSS severity score of 10.0, could allow unauthenticated remote attackers to execute malicious commands as the root user, effectively taking complete control of affected systems.

Nature of the Vulnerabilities

The vulnerabilities, tracked as CVE-2025-20281 and CVE-2025-20282, target specific APIs within Cisco ISE and ISE-PIC.

Both can be exploited without any valid credentials, making them particularly dangerous for organizations relying on these platforms for network access control and security policy enforcement.

CVE-2025-20281: API Input Validation Flaw

This vulnerability affects Cisco ISE and ISE-PIC releases 3.3 and later. It arises from the insufficient validation of user-supplied input in a specific API.

Attackers can exploit this flaw by sending crafted API requests, enabling them to execute arbitrary code on the underlying operating system with root privileges.

No authentication is required, meaning any remote attacker could potentially gain full control over the device.

CVE-2025-20282: Arbitrary File Upload and Execution

Affecting only Cisco ISE and ISE-PIC release 3.4, this vulnerability stems from a lack of file validation checks in an internal API.

Attackers can upload malicious files to privileged directories and execute them as root, again without needing authentication.

This could allow an attacker to install malware, create backdoors, or further compromise the network.

Impact and Affected Versions

Both vulnerabilities are considered critical and independent; exploiting one does not require exploiting the other, and affected software versions may differ for each flaw.

There are currently no reports of these vulnerabilities being exploited in the wild, but the risk is significant due to the high privilege level granted by successful exploitation.

• CVE-2025-20281: ISE and ISE-PIC 3.3 and later (fixed in 3.3 Patch 6 and 3.4 Patch 2)
• CVE-2025-20282: ISE and ISE-PIC 3.4 only (fixed in 3.4 Patch 2)
• ISE and ISE-PIC 3.2 and earlier are not affected.

Cisco has confirmed that there are no workarounds for these vulnerabilities. The only mitigation is to apply the provided software updates immediately.

Administrators are strongly urged to review their deployments and patch all affected systems without delay to prevent potential exploitation.

Organizations using Cisco ISE or ISE-PIC should:

• Immediately identify affected versions in their environments.
• Apply the latest patches as recommended by Cisco.
• Monitor Cisco’s security advisories for updates.

Failure to act could leave critical network infrastructure exposed to complete remote takeover by attackers.

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