# 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.

- **Severity:** High 7.5 (`CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H`)
- **Exploited in the wild:** Not known
- **Login needed:** Not needed
- **Attackable:** Over the internet
- **Victim action needed:** Not needed
- **Fix available:** No
- **Published:** 22 Jan 2025
- **Updated:** 18 Feb 2025
- **Also known as:** GHSA-gxvq-f5q4-6g92

## 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 (Memory Allocation with Excessive Size Value)

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2025-20165?

It affects 1 product.


Products: 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.

## Is CVE-2025-20165 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2025-20165 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2025-20165 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: 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.
Exploitation: There is no known exploitation of CVE-2025-20165 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected product: Cisco BroadWorks. No package-level version data is available, so check the vendor advisory linked from the reference page.

Task:
1. Search the dependency manifests and lockfiles (for example package.json, package-lock.json, requirements.txt, poetry.lock, uv.lock, pom.xml, build.gradle, go.mod, Cargo.lock, Gemfile.lock) and any Dockerfiles for the affected packages, including transitive dependencies.
2. If an affected version is in use, upgrade it to the fixed version for its release line with the project's package manager, so the lockfile is regenerated. Prefer the smallest upgrade that fixes it.
3. If there is no fix, or the upgrade would break the build, do not guess: explain the risk and the safest workaround instead.
4. Run the tests and summarise what changed and why.
5. If nothing in the project is affected, say so and change nothing.

Reference: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2025-20165/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2025-20165/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2025-20165
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-20165
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2025-20165

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2025-20165/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.