What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2020-3181: Cisco Email Security Appliance Uncontrolled Resource Exhaustion Vulnerability

• Severity: medium (CVSS 6.5 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 1.6% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2020-03-04 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-400

Description

A vulnerability in the malware detection functionality in Cisco Advanced Malware Protection (AMP) in Cisco AsyncOS Software for Cisco Email Security Appliances (ESAs) could allow an unauthenticated remote attacker to exhaust resources on an affected device. The vulnerability is due to insufficient control over system memory allocation. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a crafted email through the targeted device. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to cause an email attachment that contains malware to be delivered to a user and cause email processing delays.

Affected products

• Cisco Email Security Appliance (ESA): before 13.0.0 — fixed in 13.0.0

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Cisco Email Security Appliance (ESA) 13.0.0. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• https://tools.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-esa-resource-exhaust-D7RQAhnD
• https://tools.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-esa-resource-exhaust-D7RQAhnD

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