Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance and Firepower Threat Defense Unauthorized Access Vulnerability
- Severity
- Critical9.1CVSS 3.1, Critical
- EPSS
- 25%
- Published
- 6 Sept 2023
- Updated
- 11 Aug 2026
Description
Title, description and vendor guidance are quoted from the source records.
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.
Weakness: CWE-288, CWE-863
Known exploited
Added to CISA KEV on 13 Sept 2023
Federal remediation due date: 4 Oct 2023
Known use in ransomware campaigns
Required action: Apply mitigations per vendor instructions for group-lock and vpn-simultaneous-logins or discontinue use of the product for unsupported devices.
Exploit prediction
25% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days (percentile 98%).
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N
Affected products
Patcharo shows this vulnerability for information but does not match versions for this product yet.
- Cisco Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software · 9.8.1, 9.8.1.5, 9.8.1.7, 9.8.2, 9.8.2.8, 9.8.2.14, 9.8.2.15, 9.8.2.17, 9.8.2.20, 9.8.2.24, 9.8.2.26, 9.8.2.28 and 158 more
- Cisco Cisco Firepower Threat Defense Software · 6.2.3, 6.2.3.1, 6.2.3.2, 6.2.3.3, 6.2.3.4, 6.2.3.5, 6.2.3.6, 6.2.3.7, 6.2.3.8, 6.2.3.10, 6.2.3.11, 6.2.3.9 and 64 more
References
Provenance
Every fact on this page comes from the sources below. Nothing is written by an AI.
- Cisco (CVE record)
- Cisco (CVE record) · 27 Sept 2026, 23:46 UTC · Parser patcharo-cve5/1.1.0
- CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities
- CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities · 27 Sept 2026, 23:42 UTC · Parser patcharo-kev/1.0.0
- NVD
- NVD · 27 Sept 2026, 23:44 UTC · Parser patcharo-nvd/1.0.0
- FIRST EPSS
- FIRST EPSS · 27 Sept 2026, 23:46 UTC · Parser patcharo-epss/1.0.0
Last verified: 28 Sept 2026, 02:31 UTC