Vulnerability Database

346,508

Total vulnerabilities in the database

CVE-2022-20758 — cisco / ios_xr

Resource Management Errors

A vulnerability in the implementation of the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) Ethernet VPN (EVPN) functionality in Cisco IOS XR Software could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to cause a denial of service (DoS) condition. This vulnerability is due to the incorrect processing of a BGP update message that contains specific EVPN attributes. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a BGP update message that contains specific EVPN attributes. To exploit this vulnerability, an attacker must control a BGP speaker that has an established trusted peer connection to an affected device that is configured with the address family L2VPN EVPN to receive and process the update message. This vulnerability cannot be exploited by any data that is initiated by clients on the Layer 2 network or by peers that are not configured to accept the L2VPN EVPN address family. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to cause the BGP process to restart unexpectedly, resulting in a DoS condition. The Cisco implementation of BGP accepts incoming BGP updates only from explicitly defined peers. For this vulnerability to be exploited, the malicious BGP update message must either come from a configured, valid BGP peer or be injected by the attacker into the affected BGP network on an existing, valid TCP connection to a BGP peer.

  • Published: Apr 15, 2022
  • Updated: Nov 16, 2025
  • CVE: CVE-2022-20758
  • Severity: Medium
  • Exploit:

CVSS v3:

  • Severity: Medium
  • Score: 6.8
  • AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:N/A:H

CVSS v2:

  • Severity: High
  • Score: 7.1
  • AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:C

CWEs:

Frequently Asked Questions

A security vulnerability is a weakness in software, hardware, or configuration that can be exploited to compromise confidentiality, integrity, or availability. Many vulnerabilities are tracked as CVEs (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures), which provide a standardized identifier so teams can coordinate patching, mitigation, and risk assessment across tools and vendors.

CVSS (Common Vulnerability Scoring System) estimates technical severity, but it doesn't automatically equal business risk. Prioritize using context like internet exposure, affected asset criticality, known exploitation (proof-of-concept or in-the-wild), and whether compensating controls exist. A "Medium" CVSS on an exposed, production system can be more urgent than a "Critical" on an isolated, non-production host.

A vulnerability is the underlying weakness. An exploit is the method or code used to take advantage of it. A zero-day is a vulnerability that is unknown to the vendor or has no publicly available fix when attackers begin using it. In practice, risk increases sharply when exploitation becomes reliable or widespread.

Recurring findings usually come from incomplete Asset Discovery, inconsistent patch management, inherited images, and configuration drift. In modern environments, you also need to watch the software supply chain: dependencies, containers, build pipelines, and third-party services can reintroduce the same weakness even after you patch a single host. Unknown or unmanaged assets (often called Shadow IT) are a common reason the same issues resurface.

Use a simple, repeatable triage model: focus first on externally exposed assets, high-value systems (identity, VPN, email, production), vulnerabilities with known exploits, and issues that enable remote code execution or privilege escalation. Then enforce patch SLAs and track progress using consistent metrics so remediation is steady, not reactive.

SynScan combines attack surface monitoring and continuous security auditing to keep your inventory current, flag high-impact vulnerabilities early, and help you turn raw findings into a practical remediation plan.