CVE-2023-20118 — Rv016 Firmware
MEDIUMCVE-2023-20118 is a medium-severity (CVSS 6.5) CWE-77 vulnerability in cisco rv016 firmware. It is in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2025-03-03) — treat it as actively exploited and patch now. No vendor fix is recorded yet; mitigation options are listed below.
A vulnerability in the web-based management interface of Cisco Small Business Routers RV016, RV042, RV042G, RV082, RV320, and RV325 Routers could allow an authenticated, remote attacker…
Exploitation Status
Actively exploited in the wild
- Confirmed by CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on 2025-03-03. Federal agencies were required to remediate by 2025-03-24.
- A successful exploit gives an attacker total control of the affected component, not partial access.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA (KEV catalog and SSVC triage) for CVE-2023-20118.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2023-20118 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). Outside the shaded patch-first corner.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 395,249 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the 50–90% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.
Description
A vulnerability in the web-based management interface of Cisco Small Business Routers RV016, RV042, RV042G, RV082, RV320, and RV325 Routers could allow an authenticated, remote attacker to execute arbitrary commands on an affected device.
This vulnerability is due to improper validation of user input within incoming HTTP packets. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a crafted HTTP request to the web-based management interface. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to gain root-level privileges and access unauthorized data. To exploit this vulnerability, an attacker would need to have valid administrative credentials on the affected device.
Cisco has not and will not release software updates that address this vulnerability. However, administrators may disable the affected feature as described in the Workarounds ["#workarounds"] section.
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Affected Products
rv016 firmwareciscorv042 firmwareciscorv042g firmwareciscorv082 firmwareciscorv320 firmwareciscorv325 firmwareciscoDetection & mitigation playbook
Vendor / applianceDetect
Inventory every cisco rv016 firmware deployment and check each version against the affected-products list above.
Remediation status
No patch has shipped for CVE-2023-20118 yet — track the cisco rv016 firmware advisory for a fixed release and apply the workarounds below in the meantime.
Mitigate without a patch
Stop passing untrusted input into the interpreter or shell: call the affected binary with an argument array rather than a composed command string, reject anything outside a strict allowlist of expected values, and run the component under an account that cannot reach beyond the work it legitimately does. Alongside that, restrict the management interface to trusted networks and apply the vendor's recommended configuration mitigations.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2023-20118 being exploited in your environment?
Detect and block the exploit chain at execution, on systems you cannot patch yet.