A vulnerability in the implementation of the remote access functionality of Cisco AsyncOS Software for Cisco Secure Email and Web Manager, Cisco Secure Email Gateway, and Cisco Secure Web Appliance could allow an authenticated, local attacker to elevate privileges to root. The attacker must authenticate with valid administrator credentials.

This vulnerability is due to an architectural flaw in the password generation algorithm for the remote access functionality. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by generating a temporary password for the service account. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to execute arbitrary commands as root and access the underlying operating system.
Note: The Security Impact Rating (SIR) for this vulnerability is Medium due to the unrestricted scope of information that is accessible to an attacker.

References

• https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-20185
• https://sec.cloudapps.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-esa-sma-wsa-multi-yKUJhS34