CVE-2023-20186: SSH20Cisco125 Vulnerability - A Critical Security Threat

Recommended Action Plan (priority)

  1. Inventory devices showing "SSH-2.0-Cisco-1.25" banner.
  2. Restrict SSH reachability to management IP ranges (ACLs/firewall).
  3. Apply control-plane policing / rate limits.
  4. Schedule IOS upgrades to fixed releases.
  5. Monitor logs and network telemetry for SSH anomalies.

Send malformed KEXINIT

kexinit = b"\x14" # SSH_MSG_KEXINIT kexinit += b"\x00" * 16 # cookie (zeroed) kexinit += b"\x00" * 40 # supported algorithms (dummy)