CVE-2018-15383: Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance Direct Memory Access Denial of Service Vulnerability

Severity: high (CVSS 7.5 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 2.5% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2018-10-05 · updated 2026-08-11
Weakness: CWE-400

Description

A vulnerability in the cryptographic hardware accelerator driver of Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software and Cisco Firepower Threat Defense (FTD) Software could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to cause an affected device to reload, resulting in a temporary denial of service (DoS) condition. The vulnerability exists because the affected devices have a limited amount of Direct Memory Access (DMA) memory and the affected software improperly handles resources in low-memory conditions. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a sustained, high rate of malicious traffic to an affected device to exhaust memory on the device. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to exhaust DMA memory on the affected device, which could cause the device to reload and result in a temporary DoS condition.

Affected products

Cisco ASA Software: 9.3, 9.4, 9.5, 9.6, 9.6(43), 9.7 (+3)
Cisco Firepower Threat Defense: 6.0
Cisco Firepower Threat Defense Software: 6.0.1, 6.1.0, 6.2.0, 6.2.2, 6.2.3

References

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