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Fencer Vulns
high 7.5

CVE-2022-20960 json

A vulnerability in Cisco AsyncOS Software for Cisco Email Security Appliance (ESA) could allow an unauthenticated remote attacker to cause…

published 2022-11-03 4 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2022-26210

cvss
7.5
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.9%
EPSS 0.9% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 60%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

A vulnerability in Cisco AsyncOS Software for Cisco Email Security Appliance (ESA) could allow an unauthenticated remote attacker to cause a denial of service (DoS) condition on an affected device. This vulnerability is due to improper handling of certain TLS connections that are processed by an affected device. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by establishing a large number of concurrent TLS connections to an affected device. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to cause the device to drop new TLS email messages that come from the associated email servers. Exploitation of this vulnerability does not cause the affected device to unexpectedly reload. The device will recover autonomously within a few hours of when the attack is halted or mitigated.

Patch / fix

  • cisco email_security_appliance 14.2.1-015, 14.3.0-020

Exploit prediction

0.92% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 60% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 7.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/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

Affected products

  • Cisco Cisco Secure Email

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-400 Uncontrolled Resource Consumption
  • CWE-295 Improper Certificate Validation

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.