“Critical Cisco Catalyst Center Flaw Allows Attackers to Gain Elevated Privileges”

A critical security vulnerability in Cisco Catalyst Center Virtual Appliance has been uncovered, permitting attackers with minimal access to achieve full administrative control over the vulnerable systems.

The flaw, designated as CVE-2025-20341, affects virtual appliances operating on VMware ESXi and has a high severity classification with a CVSS score of 8.8.

This shortcoming represents a significant threat to organizations utilizing these systems for managing and monitoring networks.

The vulnerability arises from inadequate input validation within the system. When users transmit data via web requests, the software does not adequately check and authenticate the input.

This error allows attackers to send specially crafted HTTP requests that deceive the system into awarding them elevated permissions.

The attack can be executed remotely over the network, rendering it particularly perilous for systems that are exposed.

What raises concerns about this vulnerability is that an attacker only requires basic access credentials to exploit it.

Individuals with Observer role permissions, usually granted to users needing to view system data, can leverage this flaw to escalate their permissions to the Administrator level.

Once administrative access is secured, attackers can generate new user accounts, alter system configurations, and execute other unauthorized actions that jeopardize the entire network security.

Cisco security analysts discovered this flaw while addressing a support case with the Technical Assistance Center.

The firm has verified that no public exploits have been noted yet, providing organizations a chance to patch their systems before widespread attacks commence.

Technical Details and Mitigation

The vulnerability affects Cisco Catalyst Center Virtual Appliance versions 2.3.7.3-VA and subsequent releases.

The security flaw is attributed to inadequate validation processes that handle user-supplied input via HTTP requests.

When the system receives these crafted requests, it fails to adequately sanitize the data before executing privilege escalation procedures.

Cisco has launched version 2.3.7.10-VA as the fixed release rectifying this security concern. Organizations utilizing affected versions should promptly upgrade to this patched version.

The firm has indicated that no workarounds exist, making the software update the sole effective method to guard against this vulnerability.

Hardware appliances and AWS-based virtual appliances remain unaffected by this issue.