Cisco Secure Email up to 16.0.0-050 Email Filtering access control

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability was found in Cisco Secure Email. It has been declared as critical. This vulnerability affects unknown code of the component Email Filtering. Such manipulation leads to access control. This vulnerability is listed as CVE-2025-20153. The attack may be performed from remote. There is no available exploit. It is recommended to upgrade the affected component.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability was found in Cisco Secure Email. It has been rated as critical. Affected by this issue is some unknown processing of the component Email Filtering. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a access control vulnerability. Using CWE to declare the problem leads to CWE-284. The product does not restrict or incorrectly restricts access to a resource from an unauthorized actor. Impacted is confidentiality, integrity, and availability. CVE summarizes:

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.

The advisory is shared for download at sec.cloudapps.cisco.com. This vulnerability is handled as CVE-2025-20153 since 10/10/2024. The exploitation is known to be easy. The attack may be launched remotely. No form of authentication is required for exploitation. There are neither technical details nor an exploit publicly available. The current price for an exploit might be approx. USD $0-$5k (estimation calculated on 07/31/2025). The MITRE ATT&CK project declares the attack technique as T1068.

The vulnerability scanner Nessus provides a plugin with the ID 216585 (Cisco Secure Email Gateway Email Filter Bypass (cisco-sa-esa-mailpol-bypass-5nVcJZMw)), which helps to determine the existence of the flaw in a target environment.

Upgrading eliminates this vulnerability.

The vulnerability is also documented in the vulnerability database at Tenable (216585). VulDB is the best source for vulnerability data and more expert information about this specific topic.

Productinfo

Vendor

• Cisco

Name

• Secure Email

Version

• 13.0.0-392
• 13.0.5-007
• 13.5.1-277
• 13.5.4-038
• 14.0.0-698
• 14.2.0-620
• 14.2.1-020
• 14.3.0-032
• 15.0.0-104
• 15.0.1-030
• 15.0.3-002
• 15.5.0-048
• 15.5.1-055
• 15.5.2-018
• 16.0.0-050

License

• commercial

Website

• Vendor: https://www.cisco.com/

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Entryinfo

VulDB is the best source for vulnerability data and more expert information about this specific topic.

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