CVE-2026-20325: Cisco Nexus Dashboard RCE Vulnerability

CVE-2026-20325 Overview

Cisco disclosed CVE-2026-20325 as part of a proactive internal security review of Cisco Nexus Dashboard. The review produced a software hardening release addressing multiple internally discovered vulnerabilities. This specific issue involves improper neutralization of special elements used in a command, classified under [CWE-77]. An authenticated attacker with low privileges can exploit the flaw over the network without user interaction. Successful exploitation leads to a scope change with high impact to confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the affected system.

Critical Impact
An authenticated remote attacker can inject arbitrary commands into Cisco Nexus Dashboard, escaping the intended execution context and compromising the underlying system.

Affected Products

Cisco Nexus Dashboard

Discovery Timeline

2026-09-16 - CVE-2026-20325 published to NVD
2026-09-17 - Last updated in NVD database

Technical Details for CVE-2026-20325

Vulnerability Analysis

CVE-2026-20325 is a command injection vulnerability in Cisco Nexus Dashboard. The flaw belongs to [CWE-77], covering improper neutralization of special elements used in a command. Cisco identified the issue during an internal engineering review focused on product hardening. The advisory groups this CVE with other internally discovered issues addressed in the same release.

Exploitation requires network access and valid low-privilege credentials on the management interface. No user interaction is required. Because the attack results in a scope change, injected commands can affect resources beyond the vulnerable component, extending impact across the appliance and potentially the managed fabric.

Root Cause

The root cause is insufficient input sanitization before passing user-supplied data to a command execution context. When the application constructs a command string using attacker-influenced input without escaping shell metacharacters or delimiters, the input is interpreted as additional commands or arguments. Refer to the Cisco Security Advisory for component-level detail.

Attack Vector

An attacker authenticates to the Nexus Dashboard with any low-privilege account exposed to the management network. The attacker submits a crafted request to a vulnerable endpoint containing shell metacharacters or command separators embedded in expected input fields. The server incorporates the input into a system command, and the injected payload executes with the privileges of the service. Because of the scope change, the resulting execution can traverse component boundaries within the appliance.

No public proof-of-concept, exploit code, or evidence of exploitation in the wild has been reported. The CVE is not listed on the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog.

Detection Methods for CVE-2026-20325

Indicators of Compromise

Unexpected child processes spawned by Nexus Dashboard service accounts, particularly shells such as sh, bash, or python invoked from web-tier processes.
Anomalous outbound network connections initiated by the Nexus Dashboard host to attacker-controlled infrastructure.
HTTP requests to management API endpoints containing shell metacharacters such as ;, |, `, $(, or newline sequences in parameter values.

Detection Strategies

Review Nexus Dashboard audit logs and API access logs for authenticated sessions issuing requests with unusual characters or oversized parameter values.
Correlate authentication events for low-privilege accounts with subsequent process creation events on the appliance.
Deploy detections that alert when management-plane services execute interactive shells or file transfer utilities such as curl or wget.

Monitoring Recommendations

Forward Nexus Dashboard syslog and audit data to a centralized analytics platform for behavioral baselining.
Monitor egress traffic from management infrastructure and alert on connections to non-approved destinations.
Track privileged account creation, role changes, and configuration exports following any suspicious API activity.

How to Mitigate CVE-2026-20325

Immediate Actions Required

Apply the Cisco Nexus Dashboard hardening release referenced in the Cisco Security Advisory as soon as possible.
Restrict management-plane access to trusted administrative networks and jump hosts only.
Audit all Nexus Dashboard user accounts and remove or rotate credentials for unused or low-trust accounts.

Patch Information

Cisco released a software hardening version of Cisco Nexus Dashboard that addresses CVE-2026-20325 along with other internally discovered vulnerabilities. Consult the vendor advisory for fixed release numbers and upgrade guidance specific to your deployment.

Workarounds

No vendor-supplied workaround is documented; upgrading to the fixed release is the remediation path.
As a compensating control, enforce network segmentation and access control lists that limit which hosts can reach the Nexus Dashboard management interface.
Enable multi-factor authentication and review role-based access control assignments to reduce the population of accounts capable of reaching vulnerable endpoints.

bash

# Configuration example: restrict management access with an ACL (illustrative)
access-list NDW_MGMT permit tcp 10.10.0.0/24 host <nexus-dashboard-ip> eq 443
access-list NDW_MGMT deny   tcp any host <nexus-dashboard-ip> eq 443
access-list NDW_MGMT permit ip any any