Cisco Secure Client for Windows with Secure Firewall Posture Engine DLL Hijacking Vulnerability
A vulnerability in the interprocess communication (IPC) channel of Cisco Secure Client for Windows could allow an authenticated, local attacker to perform a DLL hijacking attack on an affected device if the Secure Firewall Posture Engine, formerly HostScan, is installed on Cisco Secure Client. This vulnerability is due to insufficient validation of resources that are loaded by the application at run time. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a crafted IPC message to a specific Cisco Secure Client process. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to execute arbitrary code on the affected machine with SYSTEM privileges. To exploit this vulnerability, the attacker must have valid user credentials on the Windows system. Cisco has released software updates that address this vulnerability. There are no workarounds that address this vulnerability.
describes (1)
Related CVEs.
| ID | severity | exploitable | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CVE-2025-20206US | high7.8 | — | ||
A vulnerability in the interprocess communication (IPC) channel of Cisco Secure Client for Windows could allow an authenticated, local attacker to perform a DLL hijacking attack on… | ||||
references
External citations — patches, advisories, analysis.
- Security Vulnerability Policyexternal
- Cisco Secure Client for Windows with Secure Firewall Posture Engine DLL Hijacking Vulnerabilityself
- Cisco Security Vulnerability Policyexternal
- considering software upgradesexternal
- free software updatesexternal
- https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/end-user-license-agreement.htmlexternal
- Cisco Support and Downloads pageexternal
- https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/web/tsd-cisco-worldwide-contacts.htmlexternal
remediations (1)
- FixedCisco Secure Client
Cisco has released software updates that address this vulnerability.
https://software.cisco.com
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