CVE-2026-20092
Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.
NVD · uneditedA vulnerability in the read-only maintenance shell of Cisco Intersight Virtual Appliance could allow an authenticated, local attacker with administrative privileges to elevate privileges to root on the virtual appliance. This vulnerability is due to improper file permissions on configuration files for system accounts within the maintenance shell of the virtual appliance. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by accessing the maintenance shell as a read-only administrator and manipulating system files to grant root privileges. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to elevate their privileges to root on the virtual appliance and gain full control of the appliance, giving them the ability to access sensitive information, modify workloads and configurations on the host system, and cause a denial of service (DoS).
Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.
dbcve analysis · moderate confidenceThe vulnerability stems from improper file permissions on configuration files for system accounts within the read-only maintenance shell of Cisco Intersight Virtual Appliance. An authenticated local attacker with administrative privileges can manipulate these misconfigured system files to escalate their privileges to root, gaining full control of the appliance.
Verify against the referenced sources before acting — the references below are authoritative for this CVE, this summary is not.
CVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.
From the vector- Attack vector
- Local
- Complexity
- Low
- Privileges
- High
- User interaction
- None
- Scope
- Unchanged
- Confidentiality
- High
- Integrity
- High
- Availability
- None
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N
Am I affected? How to checkSteps we derive from the advisory and the affected-version data, so you can decide whether this CVE reaches your setup. They are a guide, not a scan — your own configuration is the authority.
dbcve checksWork through these to decide whether this CVE applies to you.
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Identify Cisco Intersight Virtual Appliance installationLocate the Cisco Intersight Virtual Appliance in your environment and confirm it is running. Check for the presence of the Intersight Virtual Appliance virtual machine or physical appliance.Affected if The system is running Cisco Intersight Virtual Appliance.
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Access the maintenance shellAccess the read-only maintenance shell of the Cisco Intersight Virtual Appliance using the appropriate administrative credentials or console access method provided by Cisco.Affected if You have access to the maintenance shell and can navigate the file system.
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Locate system account configuration filesWithin the maintenance shell, navigate to the directory containing system account configuration files. These typically include files related to system user accounts, service accounts, or authentication configuration in paths such as /etc/, /opt/, or vendor-specific configuration directories.Affected if System account configuration files exist in the maintenance shell environment.
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Check file permissions on configuration filesUse the 'ls -la' command or equivalent to list file permissions on the identified system account configuration files. Look for permission strings that indicate write access for non-root users (such as permissions containing 'w' for group or others, or files owned by non-root users).Affected if Any system account configuration file shows write permissions for non-root users (permissions other than root:root with 644 or stricter).
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Verify write access for non-root usersAttempt to verify if non-administrative or non-root users can modify the system account configuration files. This may involve checking file ownership and permissions, or comparing against expected secure permissions for such files.Affected if Non-root users or non-administrative accounts have write access to system account configuration files.
Your environment is affected if you are running Cisco Intersight Virtual Appliance and the maintenance shell contains system account configuration files with insecure permissions allowing write access for non-root users.
Generated from the published advisory. Verify against your own configuration.
Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.
From vendor dataApply the vendor patch or update from Cisco that corrects the file permissions on the system account configuration files within the maintenance shell. If no patch is available, manually audit and correct file permissions to remove write access for non-root users on sensitive system configuration files.
- Consultation3.0 h
- Implementation3.0 h
- Testing2.0 h
- Review / QA2.0 h
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Free · runs locallyCheck whether your project pulls in CVE-2026-20092 — or any other known-vulnerable package — straight from your lock files. Free and open source; it runs locally and uploads nothing.
References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.
Primary sourcesPractitioner notes
ContributedPeer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2026-20092 in production — separate from our analysis above.
The advisory tells you what broke. It rarely tells you what actually worked. If you’ve dealt with this one, that detail is what the next engineer is searching for.
- The version that genuinely resolved it — not the one the vendor claimed
- A config change or rule that shut the vector down
- A gotcha in the upgrade path that cost you an afternoon
No notes yet
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- Verified mitigations, workarounds, and config changes
- Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
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