CVE-2026-20357 in Crosswork Planning
Summary
by MITRE • 08/19/2026
As part of Cisco's ongoing commitment to proactive security and product quality, the Cisco Crosswork engineering team has conducted a comprehensive internal security review. This review resulted in a software hardening release that addresses multiple internally discovered vulnerabilities.
The vulnerabilities tracked by CVE-2026-20357 are related to missing authentication for critical function issues that are grouped under the Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE) CWE-306.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 08/19/2026
Cisco Crosswork has released a software hardening update addressing multiple internally discovered vulnerabilities, with CVE-2026-20357 specifically highlighting a critical class of flaws related to missing authentication for critical functions. This vulnerability is categorized under the Common Weakness Enumeration identifier CWE-306, which describes scenarios where an application fails to properly authenticate requests before executing sensitive operations. In the context of network management and orchestration platforms like Cisco Crosswork, such weaknesses can allow unauthenticated actors to interact with core system components that are intended to be restricted to authorized administrators or internal services only. The presence of this flaw indicates a gap in access control logic where specific API endpoints or administrative interfaces do not enforce strict identity verification prior to processing commands or retrieving sensitive configuration data.
The technical nature of CWE-306 vulnerabilities often involves the absence of session validation, token verification, or role-based access checks at critical junctures within the application workflow. For Cisco Crosswork, this could potentially expose management plane functions that control network device configurations, software updates, or topology changes to unauthorized users. Without proper authentication mechanisms in place, an attacker who gains network-level access to the affected system may be able to execute privileged commands, modify security policies, or disrupt service availability by manipulating critical state variables. This type of flaw is particularly dangerous because it bypasses the primary defense layer designed to ensure that only legitimate entities can perform administrative actions, thereby undermining the integrity and confidentiality of the managed network infrastructure.
From an operational impact perspective, successful exploitation of this vulnerability could lead to significant security breaches within the enterprise environment being managed by Cisco Crosswork. Attackers might leverage these unauthenticated functions to deploy malicious configurations on connected devices, leading to widespread connectivity issues or data exfiltration pathways. Furthermore, since Crosswork often serves as a central point for network automation and assurance, compromising its integrity could allow an adversary to establish persistent access across multiple network segments by pushing out rogue scripts or altering routing protocols. The impact extends beyond simple unauthorized access; it threatens the overall reliability and trustworthiness of automated network operations, potentially causing service degradation or complete outage depending on the severity of the manipulated functions.
To mitigate these risks, organizations utilizing Cisco Crosswork should immediately apply the recommended software hardening release provided by Cisco to patch the identified authentication gaps. It is crucial for administrators to verify that their deployment environments are updated to versions where CWE-306 issues have been resolved through rigorous code review and security testing processes. Additionally, implementing defense-in-depth strategies such as network segmentation can limit lateral movement if an attacker attempts to exploit these vulnerabilities from adjacent systems. Restricting access to the Crosswork management interface via firewall rules or zero-trust principles ensures that only verified sources can reach the application layer, reducing the attack surface available for unauthenticated exploitation attempts aligned with ATT&CK techniques involving unauthorized API interactions and privilege escalation through missing authentication controls.