Unauthorized Access and Credential Brute Force in Cisco ASA/FTD Remote Access VPN
CVE-2023-20269 is an unauthorized access vulnerability in the remote access VPN feature of Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software and Cisco Firepower Threat Defense (FTD) Software. The flaw is caused by improper separation of authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA) between the remote access VPN feature and the HTTPS management and site-to-site VPN features. An attacker can exploit the issue by specifying a default connection profile/tunnel group while conducting authentication attempts or while establishing a clientless SSL VPN session using valid credentials. Successful exploitation can enable an unauthenticated remote attacker to perform brute-force attempts to identify valid username and password combinations, and can enable an authenticated remote attacker to establish a clientless SSL VPN session as an unauthorized user. Cisco notes that the issue does not bypass authentication; valid credentials are still required to establish a session, including a valid second factor where MFA is configured. The clientless SSL VPN session impact applies only to Cisco ASA Software Release 9.16 or earlier.
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Impact, mitigation & remediation
What it means. What to do now. Patch path, mitigations, and the assume-compromise checklist.
Impact
What an attacker gets, and what they’ve been doing with it.
Mitigation
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Remediation
Patch, then assume compromise.
Exploits
No public exploits tracked yet. Mallory keeps watching.
No public exploit code observed for this vulnerability.
Affected products & vendors
Products and vendors Mallory has correlated with this vulnerability. Open in Mallory to drill down to specific CPE configurations and version ranges.
Vendor-confirmed product mapping. Mallory continuously reconciles this list against your asset inventory.
Recent activity
20 sources tracked across advisories, community write-ups, and news. New activity surfaces here as Mallory finds it.
A Cisco ASA/FTD vulnerability described as a zero-day that allows brute-force attacks against AAA functions without rate limiting, enabling Akira initial access against VPN endpoints lacking MFA.
A vulnerability in Cisco ASA VPN infrastructure that Akira actors likely exploited to gain unauthorized remote access VPN access for initial intrusion.
A vulnerability exploited by Akira ransomware to compromise Windows, Linux, and ESXi systems, leading to ransomware deployment in healthcare organizations.
A zero-day vulnerability in Cisco ASA/FTD SSL VPN that the content states was actively exploited by ransomware groups.
The version that knows your environment.
Query your assets running an affected version, and investigate the blast radius.
Every observed campaign linking this CVE to a named adversary.
Malware families riding this exploit, with evidence and IOCs.
YARA, Sigma, Snort, and vendor rules, auto-deployed to your SIEM.
Cross-references every affected SKU, including bundled OEM variants.
Community discussion across Reddit, Mastodon, and other social sources.