Vulnerability record · CVE-2020-3572 · published 21 October 2020
CVE-2020-3572: Cisco adaptive security appliance uncontrolled resource consumption vulnerability
Cisco · Adaptive Security Appliance
A vulnerability in the SSL/TLS session handler of Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software and Cisco Firepower Threat Defense (FTD) Software could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to cause a denial of service (DoS) condition on an affected device. The vulnerability is due to a memory leak when closing SSL/TLS connections in a specific state. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by establishing several SSL/TLS sessions and ensuring they are closed under certain conditions. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to exhaust memory resources in the affected device, which would prevent it from processing new SSL/TLS connections, resulting in a DoS. Manual intervention is required to recover an affected device.
Description
A vulnerability in the SSL/TLS session handler of Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software and Cisco Firepower Threat Defense (FTD) Software could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to cause a denial of service (DoS) condition on an affected device. The vulnerability is due to a memory leak when closing SSL/TLS connections in a specific state. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by establishing several SSL/TLS sessions and ensuring they are closed under certain conditions. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to exhaust memory resources in the affected device, which would prevent it from processing new SSL/TLS connections, resulting in a DoS. Manual intervention is required to recover an affected device.
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:N/A:H
Affected products
3 vulnerable configurations from NVD's CPE data, grouped by vendor and product.
References
Track CVE-2020-3572 inside VULONE
Watch it alongside the ransomware crews, C2 infrastructure and forum chatter that reference it, query it through the API and pull it into your SIEM over TAXII.
Related vulnerabilities
Same products first, then exploited flaws of the same weakness class.
Source: NIST National Vulnerability Database (record CVE-2020-3572), CISA KEV, FIRST EPSS (scores of 2026-09-26). This page is refreshed as NVD updates the record.
