Attack ChainAIDerived
Hypothetical attack flow derived from CVE metadata – not a confirmed exploit chain
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AccessGain adjacent network position
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DeliveryWait for/induce victim BYOD onboarding
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ExploitSpoof legitimate user, trigger guest-portal redirect
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ExecutionHijack in-flight onboarding session
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ImpactGain access to protected 802.1X network
Vulnerability Assessment
| Weakness |
CWE
OWASP Top 10:2025
A07:2025 - Authentication Failures
ASVS 5.0
V6 - Authentication Anti-spoofing controls
MITRE ATT&CK
1 technique across 1 tactic: Defense Evasion The technique list with ATT&CK links and the kill-chain view is part of the Basic plan and up. |
| Exploitation Conditions | Exploitation requires that Cisco ISE be deployed with the SSID bring-your-own-device (BYOD) onboarding workflow in use - a specific, optional NAC feature, not a default of every ISE install. The attacker must be adjacent (AV:A: on the same local/Layer-2 network segment, e.g., the guest or onboarding SSID) and must catch a legitimate user in the act of onboarding, since the attack hinges on spoofing that user and triggering a redirection to the guest web portal (UI:R - a real user's onboarding session must be in flight). No authentication is required (PR:N). Limiting factors: adjacency (no remote Internet exploitation), dependence on a concurrent legitimate onboarding session, and reliance on the BYOD onboarding feature being configured - all of which substantially narrow real-world exploitability beyond the raw vector. |
| Impact | This is a genuinely low-priority issue by every available signal, and the signals are internally consistent rather than conflicting. The CVSS 3.1 base score is 3.8 (Low), driven by AV:A (adjacent - the attacker must be on the same Layer-2/local network segment as the victim's onboarding session, not remote-Internet-reachable), UI:R (the attack depends on a legitimate user actually undergoing BYOD onboarding and being redirected to the guest portal), and a deliberately narrow impact of C:N/I:L/A:N (integrity-only, no data disclosure, no availability loss). The S:C scope change reflects that a successful hijack yields access to a protected 802.1X network beyond the ISE authorization boundary, but the direct technical impact scored by Cisco remains modest. No EPSS score, no CISA KEV listing, and no public POC are present in the provided intelligence, so exploitation status is 'no public exploit identified at time of analysis.' There is no conflict among the signals - a low CVSS with adjacency + required user interaction + no exploitation evidence all point the same direction. The one nuance worth stating: because a successful exploit grants entry to an otherwise protected enterprise 802.1X network, the real-world consequence (a foothold on a trusted network) can exceed what the I:L score suggests, so defenders should weight the scope change more heavily than the raw 3.8 implies. This is patch-in-normal-cycle, not emergency. |
| Exploit ScenarioDerived | An attacker positioned on the same local/adjacent network (e.g., an open or guest wireless segment) waits for or induces a legitimate user to begin Cisco ISE BYOD onboarding, then spoofs that user and triggers a redirection to the guest web portal to seize the in-flight onboarding session. Because authentication checks during onboarding are insufficient, the attacker takes over the session and gains access to the protected 802.1X network. No public exploit code is identified at time of analysis, and success depends on the victim actively onboarding (UI:R) and on attacker adjacency (AV:A). |
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Alert meAnalysisAIv1 – Sep 16, 2026
Session hijacking in the SSID bring-your-own-device (BYOD) onboarding workflow of Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) allows an unauthenticated, adjacent attacker to spoof a legitimate user mid-onboarding and take over that user's session, ultimately gaining access to protected 802.1X networks. The root cause is an authentication bypass by spoofing (CWE-290): insufficient authentication checks during onboarding let the attacker trigger a redirection to the guest web portal and bind their device to the victim's in-flight session. The CVSS vector (AV:A/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:N/I:L/A:N, score 3.8) confirms no credentials are required but that the attacker must be on the same Layer-2 segment and a genuine user must be actively onboarding; this is a deliberately disabled-by-default optional NAC feature rather than a baseline ISE capability, so real-world exploitability is narrow. No public exploit code and no active exploitation have been identified at time of analysis, and no EPSS signal was provided with the source data.
RemediationAI
Apply the fixed ISE release identified in Cisco's advisory cisco-sa-ise-multi-vuln-kWLeNnRD (https://sec.cloudapps.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-ise-multi-vuln-kWLeNnRD) and validate the fix against your specific 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, or 3.5 train; the available input does not enumerate an exact patched version, so the advisory is the authoritative source for patch availability - patch availability was not independently confirmed from the provided data. Where BYOD onboarding is not operationally required, disabling the SSID BYOD onboarding workflow removes the attack surface entirely, with the trade-off that users can no longer self-provision devices onto protected 802.1X SSIDs and must fall back to out-of-band provisioning. If the workflow must remain enabled, treat the onboarding/guest SSID as low-trust infrastructure: isolate it on a dedicated VLAN with client isolation to block Layer-2 peer traffic between adjacent clients (this directly defeats the AV:A adjacency precondition, at the cost of preventing legitimate peer-to-peer communication on that SSID), restrict the onboarding portal to periods of genuine enrollment activity, and shorten onboarding session lifetimes. Monitor ISE and WLC logs for duplicate or anomalous onboarding sessions, repeated guest-portal redirections from a single client, and MAB/802.1X authorizations whose device identity does not match the sponsoring user. Given the low CVSS score (3.8), the unauthenticated-but-adjacent and user-interaction-required exploitation conditions, and the absence of public exploit code or known active exploitation, remediation can be scheduled through normal patch cycles rather than treated as an emergency.
Affected VersionsENISA
Affected Packages
Source: OSV (Open Source Vulnerabilities)
Affects your stack
Affects 1 package in euvd
Checking this CVE against your own stacks and servers is part of the Basic plan and up.
Technical ContextAI · show details
Cisco ISE is the policy decision point for network access control in Cisco environments, brokering 802.1X, MAB, and guest/BYOD admission decisions. The affected component is the SSID BYOD onboarding workflow, the self-service flow through which a user's device is provisioned onto a protected SSID; a guest web portal redirection is a normal step in that exchange. CWE-290 (Authentication Bypass by Spoofing) describes the failure class precisely: the checks binding an onboarding session to the user who initiated it are insufficient, so an attacker positioned on the same Layer-2 segment (AV:A - the onboarding or guest SSID) can impersonate the legitimate user and manipulate the portal redirection to assume the victim's session. The vector's PR:N confirms the attack is unauthenticated; UI:R confirms it is not spontaneous - a real user must be caught in the middle of an onboarding flow; S:C reflects that a successful exploit crosses a security authority boundary, converting mere adjacency into authorized network access; and C:N/I:L/A:N reflects limited integrity impact with no confidentiality or availability loss, consistent with unauthorized network admission rather than data theft or denial of service. The CPE cpe:2.3:a:cisco:cisco_identity_services_engine_software and the EUVD version list place the issue across the ISE 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, and 3.5 release trains, indicating a long-lived logic defect in the onboarding code rather than a regression in a single patch.
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Severity by source
AV:A/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:N/I:L/A:N
Adjacent BYOD onboarding (AV:A) with no auth (PR:N) but requires a victim's in-flight onboarding (UI:R); session takeover yields network access beyond ISE (S:C) with integrity-only impact (I:L, C/A:N).
Primary rating from Vendor (cisco).
CVSS VectorVendor: cisco
DescriptionCVE.org
A vulnerability in the SSID bring-your-own-device (BYOD) onboarding workflow of Cisco ISE could allow an unauthenticated, adjacent attacker to hijack the onboarding session of another user and access protected 802.1X networks.
This vulnerability is due to insufficient authentication checks that are performed while a user is being onboarded. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by spoofing the legitimate user and triggering a redirection to the guest web portal. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to take over the user session and gain access to the protected 802.1X network.
Threat Intelligence Overview
How this decision was reached
The engine reads each signal below and applies a fixed list of rules from top to bottom. The first rule that matches sets the recommended action – like a statement, every line is shown.
What every action level means
SSVC AssessmentENISA
Priority Score
Attack Technique
Authentication bypass attacks exploit flaws in the verification mechanisms that control access to systems and applications.
Authentication bypass in Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) and ISE Passive Identity Connector lets an unauthenticated
Cisco ISE and Cisco ISE-PIC can be taken over by an unauthenticated, remote attacker who reaches the REST API web servic
Improper access control vulnerabilities in Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) and ISE Passive Identity Connector (ISE-
Remote, unauthenticated attackers with network access to Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) or ISE Passive Identity Co
Command injection in Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) lets an authenticated remote attacker holding only Read-Only A
Command injection in Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) and ISE Passive Identity Connector (PIC) allows authenticated
Remote code execution and privilege escalation in Cisco Identity Services Engine allows authenticated attackers with Rea
Authenticated remote command execution in Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) and ISE Passive Identity Connector (ISE-P
SQL injection in the SXP REST API of Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) lets a remote attacker who already holds valid
Command injection in Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) allows an authenticated, high-privileged remote administrator
Improper input validation in Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) and Cisco ISE Passive Identity Connector (ISE-PIC) all
Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) and ISE Passive Identity Connector (ISE-PIC) contain multiple internally discovered
EUVD-2026-81158
GHSA-mc6q-xfc2-72q5
NVD
CVE.org
EPSS
Vulnrichment
Exploit-DB