CVE-2019-12709: Cisco IOS XR Software for Cisco ASR 9000 VMAN CLI Privilege Escalation Vulnerability

Severity: medium (CVSS 6.7 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.5% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2019-09-25 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-78

Description

A vulnerability in a CLI command related to the virtualization manager (VMAN) in Cisco IOS XR Software for Cisco ASR 9000 Series Aggregation Services Routers could allow an authenticated, local attacker to execute arbitrary commands on the underlying Linux operating system with root privileges. The vulnerability is due to insufficient validation of arguments passed to a specific VMAN CLI command on an affected device. An attacker who has valid administrator access to an affected device could exploit this vulnerability by including malicious input as the argument of an affected command. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to run arbitrary commands on the underlying operating system with root privileges, which may lead to complete system compromise.

Affected products

Cisco IOS XR Software: from 5.1.0 before 6.5.3; from 6.6.0 before 6.6.2 — fixed in 6.5.3, 6.6.2

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Cisco IOS XR Software 6.5.3, 6.6.2. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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