Cisco ASA and FTD Information Disclosure Vulnerability
What it is
Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) and Firepower Threat Defense (FTD) contain an information disclosure vulnerability. An attacker could retrieve memory contents on an affected device, which could lead to the disclosure of confidential information due to a buffer tracking issue when the software parses invalid URLs that are requested from the web services interface. This vulnerability affects only specific AnyConnect and WebVPN configurations.
Known to be used in ransomware campaigns.Active threat actors have chained this vulnerability into ransomware operations — treat patching as a same-week priority, not a "next maintenance window" task. The coping action is the same one below; the urgency is higher.
Who's affected
Affects anyone with Cisco networking or security appliances on their network — typically a firewall, switch, or remote-access VPN. That device controls traffic to and from every workstation; exploitation can mean an attacker pivots inside the network without touching any user device.
What to do
Apply mitigations per vendor instructions or discontinue use of the product if mitigations are unavailable.
CISA action deadline: March 7, 2024. Federal agencies must complete the required action by this date. For private SMBs the deadline is advisory — but treat it as a strong recommendation, especially if you handle regulated data (HIPAA, GLBA, ABA model rules).
If you don't have someone in-house to verify the patch deployed across every endpoint — or you're not sure whether you're affected — that's exactly the kind of triage we do. Book a free 20-minute triage call.
Severity
CVSS base score: 7.5 — HIGH
Weakness classification: CWE-200
Source
Pulled daily from the public cisagov/kev-data mirror (CC0). View the original entry on cisa.gov. CISA KEV is US-Government public-domain data; we add the SMB-vertical framing and the coping action above.