Cisco Industrial Ethernet Switches up to 1.9.5 Management Plane privileges management

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability described as critical has been identified in Cisco Industrial Ethernet Switches up to 1.9.5. The impacted element is an unknown function of the component Management Plane. Executing a manipulation can lead to privileges management. This vulnerability is tracked as CVE-2026-20177. The attack can be launched remotely. No exploit exists.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability classified as critical was found in Cisco Industrial Ethernet Switches up to 1.9.5. This vulnerability affects an unknown code block of the component Management Plane. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a privileges management vulnerability. The CWE definition for the vulnerability is CWE-269. The product does not properly assign, modify, track, or check privileges for an actor, creating an unintended sphere of control for that actor. As an impact it is known to affect availability. CVE summarizes:

A vulnerability in the handling of management plane packets by Cisco Industrial Ethernet (IE) 1000 Series Switches could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to cause the device manager, SSH, or API to become inaccessible.This vulnerability is due to insufficient protection against management plane flooding attacks. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a high rate of ICMP, SSH, or HTTP traffic to an affected device. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to cause the CPU of the device to increase, resulting in a denial of service (DoS) condition on the device manager web GUI, SSH, or API. Data traffic through the device is not affected.

The advisory is available at sec.cloudapps.cisco.com. This vulnerability was named CVE-2026-20177 since 10/08/2025. The exploitation appears to be easy. The attack can be initiated remotely. No form of authentication is required for a successful exploitation. The technical details are unknown and an exploit is not available. The structure of the vulnerability defines a possible price range of USD $0-$5k at the moment (estimation calculated on 08/19/2026). This vulnerability is assigned to T1068 by the MITRE ATT&CK project.

There is no information about possible countermeasures known. It may be suggested to replace the affected object with an alternative product.

If you want to get best quality of vulnerability data, you may have to visit VulDB.

Productinfo

Vendor

• Cisco

Name

• Industrial Ethernet Switches

Version

• 1.1
• 1.2
• 1.3
• 1.6
• 1.7.0
• 1.8.0
• 1.8.1
• 1.8.2
• 1.9.1
• 1.9.2
• 1.9.2a
• 1.9.3
• 1.9.4
• 1.9.5

License

• commercial

Website

• Vendor: https://www.cisco.com/

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If you want to get best quality of vulnerability data, you may have to visit VulDB.

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