A vulnerability in Cisco Emergency Responder could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to log in to an affected device using the…

Description

A vulnerability in Cisco Emergency Responder could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to log in to an affected device using the root account, which has default, static credentials that cannot be changed or deleted. This vulnerability is due to the presence of static user credentials for the root account that are typically reserved for use during development. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by using the account to log in to an affected system. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to log in to the affected system and execute arbitrary commands as the root user.

Scores

EPSS (exploitation in 30 days)

2.6% · top 14% of all CVEs (6 Nov 2026)

CISA SSVC

Exploitation: none · Automatable: yes · Technical impact: total

The list uses the assigner's score when there is one, then CISA's, then NVD's: Critical 9.8.

Weakness

• CWE-798: Use of Hard-coded Credentials (opens in a new tab)All about CWE-798 and its CVEs

Affected products

• Cisco · Cisco Emergency Responder

  • affected 12.5(1)SU4

What to do

Exploitation: The Cisco PSIRT is not aware of any public announcements or malicious use of the vulnerability that is described in this advisory.

References (1)

• cisco-sa-cer-priv-esc-B9t3hqk9 (opens in a new tab)x_transferred

Sources

The same CVE in the primary databases and aggregators, to check against.

• CVE.org record (opens in a new tab)
• CVE List JSON (GitHub) (opens in a new tab)
• NVD (opens in a new tab)
• FIRST EPSS (opens in a new tab)
• OSV.dev (opens in a new tab)
• GitHub Advisories (opens in a new tab)
• CIRCL Vulnerability-Lookup (opens in a new tab)

Badge for a README or a ticket

[![CVE-2023-20101](https://trackcve.app/badge/CVE-2023-20101.svg)](https://trackcve.app/cve/CVE-2023-20101)

Record last updated 16 Dec 2025, 18:23 UTC.