Cisco Releases Security Advisory for Secure Client

CVE-2025-20206 could allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code with system privileges

Threat ID:: CC-4628
Threat Severity:: Medium
Published:: 6 March 2025 2:11 PM

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Summary

CVE-2025-20206 could allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code with system privileges

Affected platforms

The following platforms are known to be affected:

Versions: All prior to 5.1.8.105

Cisco Secure Client for Windows

Cisco Secure Client for Windows when it has the Secure Firewall Posture Engine installed.

Note: The Secure Firewall Posture Engine should not be confused with the ISE Posture module. The ISE Posture module is not affected.

Threat details

Introduction

Cisco has released a security advisory to address a vulnerability in its Secure Client for Windows. Secure Client is Cisco's endpoint virtual private network (VPN) solution.

CVE-2025-20206 has a CVSSv3 score of 7.1 and if exploited could allow an authenticated, local attacker to achieve arbitrary code execution (ACE) on the affected machine with SYSTEM privileges via DLL hijacking.

The vulnerability only affects the Windows version of Secure Client, and only affects Secure Clients with the Secure Firewall Posture Engine module installed.

Remediation advice

Affected organisations are encouraged to review Cisco Security Advisory cisco-sa-secure-dll-injection-AOyzEqSg and apply the relevant updates as soon as practicable.

Definitive source of threat updates

https://sec.cloudapps.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-secure-dll-injection-AOyzEqSg

CVE Vulnerabilities

Status Published

CVE-2025-20206

A vulnerability in the interprocess communication (IPC) channel of Cisco Secure Client for Windows could allow an authenticated, local attacker to perform a DLL hijacking attack on an affected device if the Secure Firewall Posture Engine, formerly HostScan, is installed on Cisco Secure Client. This vulnerability is due to insufficient validation of resources that are loaded by the application at run time. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a crafted IPC message to a specific Cisco Secure Client process. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to execute arbitrary code on the affected machine with SYSTEM privileges. To exploit this vulnerability, the attacker must have valid user credentials on the Windows system.

Last edited: 6 March 2025 2:11 pm