Cisco IOS XR Improper Exception Handling (CWE-703) CVE-2026-20280
CVE-2026-20280 Published on September 2, 2026

Cisco IOS XR Software Security Hardening Release: September 2026
As part of Cisco's ongoing commitment to proactive security and product quality, the Cisco IOS XR Software engineering team has conducted a comprehensive internal security review. This review resulted in a software hardening releases that address multiple internally discovered vulnerabilities. The vulnerabilities tracked by CVE-2026-20280 are related to improper checking or handling of exceptional condition issues that are grouped under the Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE) CWE-703.

NVD

Vulnerability Analysis

CVE-2026-20280 is exploitable with network access, and requires small amount of user privileges. This vulnerability is considered to have a low attack complexity. The potential impact of an exploit of this vulnerability is considered to be very high.

Attack Vector:
NETWORK
Attack Complexity:
LOW
Privileges Required:
LOW
User Interaction:
NONE
Scope:
UNCHANGED
Confidentiality Impact:
HIGH
Integrity Impact:
HIGH
Availability Impact:
HIGH

Weakness Type

Improper Check or Handling of Exceptional Conditions

The software does not properly anticipate or handle exceptional conditions that rarely occur during normal operation of the software.


Products Associated with CVE-2026-20280

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Affected Versions

Cisco IOS XR Software: