CVE-2025-20165 Cisco BroadWorks SIP Denial of Service Vulnerability
Unauthenticated remote attackers can cause a denial of service in Cisco BroadWorks by exhausting memory through excessive SIP requests.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Not needed
- Attackable
- Over the internet
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- None listed
What is CVE-2025-20165?
CVE-2025-20165 is a high-severity denial of service vulnerability in Cisco BroadWorks, published on 22 Jan 2025. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.
Official description
A vulnerability in the SIP processing subsystem of Cisco BroadWorks could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to halt the processing of incoming SIP requests, resulting in a denial of service (DoS) condition. This vulnerability is due to improper memory handling for certain SIP requests. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a high number of SIP requests to an affected system. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to exhaust the memory that was allocated to the Cisco BroadWorks Network Servers that handle SIP traffic. If no memory is available, the Network Servers can no longer process incoming requests, resulting in a DoS condition that requires manual intervention to recover.
Weakness: CWE-789
Which versions are affected by CVE-2025-20165?
It affects 1 product.
Products include Cisco Broadworks Network Server.
How do I fix CVE-2025-20165?
No fix has been published for CVE-2025-20165 yet. Limit exposure of the affected software until one is available.
Upgrade, then put limits on request size, rate and nesting depth so one client cannot exhaust the service. More about Denial of service.
Is CVE-2025-20165 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2025-20165 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Sources
Also known as GHSA-gxvq-f5q4-6g92.