AI analysis
CVE-2026-20130 covers a set of internally discovered improper neutralization of special elements issues (CWE-74, the injection class of weaknesses) in Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) and the Cisco ISE Passive Identity Connector (ISE-PIC), found during a comprehensive internal security review and addressed in a software hardening release. Per the CVSS vector, the flaws are remotely exploitable by an unauthenticated attacker with no user interaction required (AV:N/AC:L/PR:N). Successful exploitation carries high impact on confidentiality, integrity, and availability with scope change, meaning an attacker could potentially break out beyond the vulnerable component to compromise additional system scope. Any organization running Cisco ISE or ISE-PIC for network access control or passive identity services is potentially affected. There is currently no known exploitation, no public proof-of-concept, and the flaw is not listed in CISA's KEV.
What to do: Apply the Cisco ISE software hardening release referenced in the PSIRT advisory as soon as practical, checking the advisory for the exact fixed release for your ISE/ISE-PIC train since versions are not specified here. In the interim, restrict administrative and API-facing interfaces of ISE (Admin portal, pxGrid, related services) to trusted management networks and review logs for unexpected unauthenticated requests. Include hosts running ISE-PIC (typically Windows domain controllers) in the patch and monitoring plan.
Affected
| Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) | — |
| Cisco ISE Passive Identity Connector (ISE-PIC) | — |
Estimated exposure
largeLikely on the order of tens of thousands of enterprise/public-sector deployments of Cisco ISE, with internet-exposed instances expected to be a much smaller… — Cisco ISE is a long-standing flagship enterprise NAC/identity platform with a broad installed base, but it is typically deployed on internal networks as a policy server (with ISE-PIC connectors on domain controllers), so the number of…
Order-of-magnitude estimate by the model from install counts, market share and public scan data it knows; verify before quoting.
Description
As part of Cisco's ongoing commitment to proactive security and product quality, the Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) and Cisco ISE Passive Identity Connector (ISE-PIC), engineering teams have conducted a comprehensive internal security review. This review resulted in a software hardening release that addresses multiple internally discovered vulnerabilities. The vulnerabilities tracked by CVE-2026-20130 are related to improper neutralization of special elements issues that are grouped under the Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE) Pillar CWE-74.