CVE-2023-20235 — A vulnerability in the on-device application development workflow feature for th

A vulnerability in the on-device application development workflow feature for the Cisco IOx application hosting infrastructure in Cisco IOS XE Software could allow an authenticated, remote attacker to access the underlying operating system as the root user. This vulnerability exi

01What is this vulnerability?

A vulnerability in the on-device application development workflow feature for the Cisco IOx application hosting infrastructure in Cisco IOS XE Software could allow an authenticated, remote attacker to access the underlying operating system as the root user. This vulnerability exists because Docker containers with the privileged runtime option are not blocked when they are in application…

02Affected products

Vendor	Product	Versions
Cisco	Cisco IOS XE Software	17.3.1, 17.3.2, 17.3.3, 17.3.1a, 17.3.1w, 17.3.2a, 17.3.1x, 17.3.1z, 17.3.4, 17.3.5, 17.3.4a, 17.3.6, 17.3.4b, 17.3.4c, 17.3.5a, 17.3.5b, 17.3.7, 17.4.1, 17.4.2, 17.4.1a, 17.4.1b, 17.4.2a, 17.5.1, 17.5.1a, 17.5.1b, 17.5.1c, 17.6.1, 17.6.2, 17.6.1w, 17.6.1a, 17.6.1x, 17.6.3, 17.6.1y, 17.6.1z, 17.6.3a, 17.6.4, 17.6.1z1, 17.6.5, 17.6.5a, 17.7.1, 17.7.1a, 17.7.1b, 17.7.2, 17.10.1, 17.10.1a, 17.10.1b, 17.8.1, 17.8.1a, 17.9.1, 17.9.1w, 17.9.2, 17.9.1a, 17.9.1x, 17.9.1y, 17.9.3, 17.9.2a, 17.9.1x1, 17.9.3a, 17.9.4, 17.9.1y1, 17.9.4a, 17.11.1, 17.11.1a, 17.12.1, 17.12.1a, 17.11.99SW

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: 2023-10-04T16:14:00.667Z
• Last modified: 2026-02-25T17:20:09.150Z

09References

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