What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2020-3253: Cisco Firepower Threat Defense Software Shell Access Vulnerability

• Severity: medium (CVSS 6.7 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 0.3% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2020-05-06 · updated 2026-08-11
• Weakness: CWE-284

Description

A vulnerability in the support tunnel feature of Cisco Firepower Threat Defense (FTD) Software could allow an authenticated, local attacker to access the shell of an affected device even though expert mode is disabled. The vulnerability is due to improper configuration of the support tunnel feature. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by enabling the support tunnel, setting a key, and deriving the tunnel password. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to run any system command with root access on an affected device.

Affected products

• Cisco Firepower Threat Defense Software: before 6.5.0 — fixed in 6.5.0

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Cisco Firepower Threat Defense Software 6.5.0. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• https://tools.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-ftd-shell-9rhJF68K
• https://tools.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-ftd-shell-9rhJF68K

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