CVE-2023-20269

Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance and Firepower Threat Defense: Unauthorized Access

As of , CVE-2023-20269 in Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance and Firepower Threat Defense is on CISA's list of exploited vulnerabilities: CISA listed it on . Our patch-first group: Patch this week.

Exploited
Yes: CISA listed it on 13 September 2023
US federal deadline
4 October 202321 days after CISA listed it. US federal civilian agencies must fix it by then.
Used in ransomware campaigns
Known
EPSS score
0.25Higher than 97% of the CVEs EPSS scores. EPSS estimates the chance of exploitation activity in the next 30 days.
EPSS when listed
0.00 on 13 September 2023EPSS on the day CISA listed it.
Public exploit
None foundNeither Metasploit nor Exploit-DB lists one.
Fix
Vendor advice: sec.cloudapps.cisco.comLinks below, from CISA's entry.

What CISA says to do

Apply mitigations per vendor instructions for group-lock and vpn-simultaneous-logins or discontinue use of the product for unsupported devices.

CISA's required action

What the flaw is

Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance and Firepower Threat Defense contain an unauthorized access vulnerability that could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to conduct a brute force attack in an attempt to identify valid username and password combinations or establish a clientless SSL VPN session with an unauthorized user.

CISA's description

A vulnerability in the remote access VPN feature of Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software and Cisco Firepower Threat Defense (FTD) Software could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to conduct a brute force attack in an attempt to identify valid username and password combinations or an authenticated, remote attacker to establish a clientless SSL VPN session with an unauthorized user. This vulnerability is due to improper separation of authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA) between the remote access VPN feature and the HTTPS management and site-to-site VPN features. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by specifying a default connection profile/tunnel group while conducting a brute force attack or while establishing a clientless SSL VPN session using valid credentials. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to achieve one or both of the following: Identify valid credentials that could then be used to establish an unauthorized remote access VPN session. Establish a clientless SSL VPN session (only when running Cisco ASA Software Release 9.16 or earlier). Notes: Establishing a client-based remote access VPN tunnel is not possible as these default connection profiles/tunnel groups do not and cannot have an IP address pool configured. This vulnerability does not allow an attacker to bypass authentication.

The CVE record's description, from cisco, shortened; full text on cve.org

CVE published
6 September 2023
Assigned by
cisco
CVSS
5.0 Medium (CVSS 3.1, from the CNA)
CWE-288
Authentication Bypass Using an Alternate Path or Channel
CISA SSVC, exploitation
active
CISA SSVC, automatable
no
CISA SSVC, technical impact
partial

Timeline

  1. The CVE record was published.
  2. CISA added it to its list of exploited vulnerabilities.
  3. The US federal deadline to fix it.

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