What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2025-20188

• Severity: critical (CVSS 10.0 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 27.5% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: yes
• Published: 2025-05-07 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-798

Description

A vulnerability in the Out-of-Band Access Point (AP) Image Download, the Clean Air Spectral Recording, and the client debug bundles features of Cisco IOS XE Software for Wireless LAN Controllers (WLCs) could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to upload arbitrary files to an affected system. This vulnerability is due to the presence of a hard-coded JSON Web Token (JWT) on an affected system. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending crafted HTTPS requests to the AP file upload interface. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to upload files, perform path traversal, and execute arbitrary commands with root privileges.

Affected products

• Cisco IOS XE: 17.11.1, 17.11.99sw, 17.12.1, 17.12.2, 17.12.3, 17.13.1 (+1)

References

• https://sec.cloudapps.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-wlc-file-uplpd-rHZG9UfC
• https://horizon3.ai/attack-research/attack-blogs/cisco-ios-xe-wlc-arbitrary-file-upload-vulnerability-cve-2025-20188-analysis/

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