DHCP Snooping Vulnerability in Cisco IOS XE Software

CVE-2025-20162

What is CVE-2025-20162?

A vulnerability in the DHCP snooping security feature of Cisco IOS XE Software allows an unauthenticated, remote attacker to exploit improper handling of DHCP request packets. By sending malicious DHCP requests, the attacker can cause packets to wedge in the device's interface queue, leading to a denial of service condition for downstream devices. This situation necessitates a system restart to resolve the queue build-up, disrupting network operations. Notably, this vulnerability can be exploited through both unicast and broadcast DHCP packets on VLANs lacking DHCP snooping.

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