CVE-2023-20033 — A vulnerability in Cisco IOS XE Software for Cisco Catalyst 3650 and Catalyst 38

A vulnerability in Cisco IOS XE Software for Cisco Catalyst 3650 and Catalyst 3850 Series Switches could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to cause an affected device to reload unexpectedly, resulting in a denial of service (DoS) condition. This vulnerability is due to im

01What is this vulnerability?

A vulnerability in Cisco IOS XE Software for Cisco Catalyst 3650 and Catalyst 3850 Series Switches could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to cause an affected device to reload unexpectedly, resulting in a denial of service (DoS) condition. This vulnerability is due to improper resource management when processing traffic that is received on the management interface. An attacker could…

02Affected products

Vendor	Product	Versions
Cisco	Cisco IOS XE Software	16.3.1, 16.3.2, 16.3.3, 16.3.1a, 16.3.4, 16.3.5, 16.3.5b, 16.3.6, 16.3.7, 16.3.8, 16.3.9, 16.3.10, 16.3.11, 16.4.1, 16.5.1, 16.5.1a, 16.6.1, 16.6.2, 16.6.3, 16.6.4, 16.6.5, 16.6.4a, 16.6.6, 16.6.7, 16.6.8, 16.6.9, 16.6.10, 16.7.1, 16.8.1, 16.8.1a, 16.8.1s, 16.9.1, 16.9.2, 16.9.1s, 16.9.3, 16.9.4, 16.9.3a, 16.9.5, 16.9.6, 16.9.7, 16.9.8, 16.11.1, 16.11.2, 16.11.1s, 16.12.1, 16.12.1s, 16.12.2, 16.12.3, 16.12.8, 16.12.4, 16.12.3s, 16.12.3a, 16.12.5, 16.12.6, 16.12.5b, 16.12.6a, 16.12.7, 16.12.9

03Active exploitation status

Not currently listed on the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog. EPSS is the best forward-looking signal — see the EPSS row above.

04Recommended remediation

• Patch to a fixed version listed in the vendor advisory (see references below).
• Mitigate with WAF rules, network egress filters, or feature flags where the patch is not yet available.
• Hunt historical logs for exploitation indicators — see Detection signatures below.

05Technical details

For the full vendor write-up, exploit chains, and reference implementations, see the references list in section 09.

06Detection signatures

Ask SARA in chat to draft a starting detection for this CVE in your stack of choice.

07Related CVEs

No directly-cited follow-up CVEs in the KB record for this advisory. The references list in section 09 carries the vendor cross-references.

08Timeline

• Published: 2023-09-27T17:20:18.221Z
• Last modified: 2025-06-18T14:10:56.951Z

09References

• sec.cloudapps.cisco.com — https://sec.cloudapps.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/ci…