CVE-2023-20269
Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance and Firepower Threat Defense Unauthorized Access Vulnerability
Does this matter?
Known to be exploited in the wild (CISA KEV, CISA remediation deadline 4 October 2023). Treat as an emergency change: patch or isolate now, then hunt for prior compromise.
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. To successfully establish a remote access VPN session, valid credentials are required, including a valid second factor if multi-factor authentication (MFA) is configured. Cisco will release software updates that address this vulnerability. There are workarounds that address this vulnerability.
- CVSS 3.1
- 9.1 CRITICALCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N
- EPSS
- 26.62% probability · 98th percentile
- Public exploits
- None in Exploit-DB
- CISA KEV
- Listed 13 September 2023 · due 4 October 2023 · used in ransomware campaigns
- Weakness
- CWE-288, CWE-863
- Affected
- cisco/adaptive security appliance software · cisco/secure firewall threat defense
- Source
- psirt@cisco.com
EPSS moved from 26.6% on 25 October 2026 to 26.6% on 30 October 2026. The dashed line is the ten per cent mark our analysts treat as “patch before the next change window”.
CISA notes
Apply mitigations per vendor instructions for group-lock and vpn-simultaneous-logins or discontinue use of the product for unsupported devices. https://sec.cloudapps.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-asaftd-ravpn-auth-8LyfCkeC; https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2023-20269
References
- https://sec.cloudapps.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-asaftd-ravpn-auth-8LyfCkeCVendor Advisory
- https://sec.cloudapps.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-asaftd-ravpn-auth-8LyfCkeCVendor Advisory
- https://www.cisa.gov/known-exploited-vulnerabilities-catalog?field_cve=CVE-2023-20269US Government Resource
Source: NVD record, EPSS from FIRST.org, KEV from CISA, exploits from Exploit-DB. Refreshed daily. Download this record as JSON.