CVE-2026-20084

Published Mar 25, 2026

Last updated 23 days ago

Overview

Description
A vulnerability in the DHCP snooping feature of Cisco IOS XE Software could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to cause BOOTP packets to be forwarded between VLANs, resulting in a denial of service (DoS) condition. This vulnerability is due to improper handling of BOOTP packets on Cisco Catalyst 9000 Series Switches. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending BOOTP request packets to an affected device. A successful exploit could allow an attacker to forward BOOTP packets from one VLAN to another, resulting in BOOTP VLAN leakage and potentially leading to high CPU utilization. This makes the device unreachable (either through console or remote management) and unable to forward traffic, resulting in a DoS condition. Note: This vulnerability can be exploited with either unicast or broadcast BOOTP packets. There are workarounds that address this vulnerability.
Source
psirt@cisco.com
NVD status
Analyzed
Products
ios_xe

Risk scores

CVSS 3.1

Type
Secondary
Base score
8.6
Impact score
4
Exploitability score
3.9
Vector string
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:N/A:H
Severity
HIGH

Weaknesses

psirt@cisco.com
CWE-400

Social media

Hype score
Not currently trending

Configurations