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Fencer Vulns
high 8.6

CVE-2018-15460 json

Cisco Email Security Appliance URL Filtering Denial of Service Vulnerability

published 2019-01-10 7 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2018-7338

cvss
8.6
version 3.0, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
2.5%
EPSS 2.5% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 84%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

A vulnerability in the email message filtering feature of Cisco AsyncOS Software for Cisco Email Security Appliances (ESA) could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to cause the CPU utilization to increase to 100 percent, causing a denial of service (DoS) condition on an affected device. The vulnerability is due to improper filtering of email messages that contain references to whitelisted URLs. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a malicious email message that contains a large number of whitelisted URLs. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to cause a sustained DoS condition that could force the affected device to stop scanning and forwarding email messages.

Patch / fix

  • cisco asyncos 11.0.2-044_md, 11.1.2-023_md

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
none
Automatable
yes
Technical impact
partial
Assessed
23 mo ago

Exploit prediction

2.52% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 84% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.0 8.6 CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:N/A:H
NVD 3.1 8.6 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:N/A:H
NVD 2.0 7.8 AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:C

Affected products

  • Cisco Cisco Email Security Appliance (ESA)

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-20 Improper Input Validation
  • CWE-770 Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling

References

Sources

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.