Resource exhaustion in Cisco iOS Xr Software

CVE-2025-20141

A vulnerability in the handling of specific packets that are punted from a line card to a route processor in Cisco IOS XR Software Release 7.9.2 could allow an unauthenticated, adjacent attacker to cause control plane traffic to stop working on multiple Cisco IOS XR platforms.  This vulnerability is due to incorrect handling of packets that are punted to the route processor. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending traffic, which must be handled by the Linux stack on the route processor, to an affected device. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to cause control plane traffic to stop working, resulting in a denial of service (DoS) condition.

Published · last modified .

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 7.4 (High). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:A/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:N/A:H.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.002 (13.2th percentile), scored .

Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 13th percentile — 13.2% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS trend (30 days)EPSS over the last 30 days for CVE-2025-20141: held from 0.002 to 0.002.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.002 · newest: 0.002 · change: 0.000

Affected products

Weakness classification (CWE)

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2025-20141?
CVE-2025-20141 is a high-severity vulnerability in Cisco iOS Xr Software, classified under Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling. CVSS score: 7.4/10. Published 2025-03-12.
How severe is CVE-2025-20141?
High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 7.4 out of 10.