Cisco Wireless LAN Controller Secure Shell Denial of Service Vulnerability

published 2019-10-16 7 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2019-6272

cvss: 8.6; version 3.0, CNA
cisa kev: Not listed; not in CISA's catalog
epss: 1.4%; EPSS 1.4% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 72%
public exploits: 0; none known

A vulnerability in the Secure Shell (SSH) session management for Cisco Wireless LAN Controller (WLC) Software could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to cause a denial of service (DoS) condition on an affected device. The vulnerability exists because the SSH process is not properly deleted when an SSH connection to the device is disconnected. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by repeatedly opening SSH connections to an affected device. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to exhaust system resources by initiating multiple SSH connections to the device that are not effectively terminated, which could result in a DoS condition.

CISA SSVC

Exploitation: none
Automatable: yes
Technical impact: partial
Assessed: 23 mo ago (2024-11-19)

Exploit prediction

1.42% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 72% 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	7.5	CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/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 Wireless LAN Controller (WLC)

Classification

Weakness

CWE-20 Improper Input Validation
CWE-404 Improper Resource Shutdown or Release

References

tools.cisco.com /security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-20191016-wlc-ssh-dos
vendor-advisory

Sources

CVE List CVE-2019-15262
NVD CVE-2019-15262

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Summary