CVE-2022-20795: Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance and Cisco Firepower Threat Defense Software AnyConnect SSL VPN Denial of Service Vulnerability

Severity: high (CVSS 7.5 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.7% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2022-04-21 · updated 2026-08-11
Weakness: CWE-345

Description

A vulnerability in the implementation of the Datagram TLS (DTLS) protocol in Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software and Cisco Firepower Threat Defense (FTD) Software could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to cause high CPU utilization, resulting in a denial of service (DoS) condition. This vulnerability is due to suboptimal processing that occurs when establishing a DTLS tunnel as part of an AnyConnect SSL VPN connection. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a steady stream of crafted DTLS traffic to an affected device. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to exhaust resources on the affected VPN headend device. This could cause existing DTLS tunnels to stop passing traffic and prevent new DTLS tunnels from establishing, resulting in a DoS condition. Note: When the attack traffic stops, the device recovers gracefully.

Affected products

Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance: through 9.16.3
Cisco ASA Software: from 9.17.0 through 9.17.1.9
Cisco Firepower Threat Defense Software: through 7.0.1; from 7.1.0.0 through 7.1.0.1

References

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