Cisco Firepower Threat Defense Software VPN System Logging Denial of Service Vulnerability

published 2020-05-06 6 y ago modified 2026-08-11 2 mo ago also EUVD-2020-24460

cvss: 8.6; version 3.0, CNA
cisa kev: Not listed; not in CISA's catalog
epss: 1.9%; EPSS 1.9% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 79%
public exploits: 0; none known

A vulnerability in the VPN System Logging functionality for Cisco Firepower Threat Defense (FTD) Software could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to cause a memory leak that can deplete system memory over time, which can cause unexpected system behaviors or device crashes. The vulnerability is due to the system memory not being properly freed for a VPN System Logging event generated when a VPN session is created or deleted. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by repeatedly creating or deleting a VPN tunnel connection, which could leak a small amount of system memory for each logging event. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to cause system memory depletion, which can lead to a systemwide denial of service (DoS) condition. The attacker does not have any control of whether VPN System Logging is configured or not on the device, but it is enabled by default.

CISA SSVC

Exploitation: none
Automatable: yes
Technical impact: partial
Assessed: 23 mo ago (2024-11-15)

Exploit prediction

1.86% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 79% 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	5.0	AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P

Affected products

Cisco Cisco Firepower Threat Defense Software

Classification

Weakness

CWE-400 Uncontrolled Resource Consumption
CWE-401 Missing Release of Memory after Effective Lifetime

References

tools.cisco.com /security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-ftd-dos-Rdpe34sd8
vendor-advisory

Sources

CVE List CVE-2020-3189
NVD CVE-2020-3189

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.

Summary