Resource exhaustion in Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance Software

CVE-2020-3196

A vulnerability in the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)/Transport Layer Security (TLS) handler of Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software and Cisco Firepower Threat Defense (FTD) Software could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to exhaust memory resources on the affected device, leading to a denial of service (DoS) condition. The vulnerability is due to improper resource management for inbound SSL/TLS connections. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by establishing multiple SSL/TLS connections with specific conditions to the affected device. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to exhaust the memory on the affected device, causing the device to stop accepting new SSL/TLS connections and resulting in a DoS condition for services on the device that process SSL/TLS traffic. Manual intervention is required to recover an affected device.

Vulnerability class: DoS (Denial of Service)

Published 2020-05-06 · last modified 2026-08-11.