Cisco · Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) and Firepower Threat Defense (FTD)
CVE-2024-20359
Cisco ASA and FTD Privilege Escalation Vulnerability
What it is
A vulnerability in a legacy capability that allowed for the preloading of VPN clients and plug-ins and that has been available in Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software and Cisco Firepower Threat Defense (FTD) Software could allow an authenticated, local attacker to execute arbitrary code with root-level privileges. Administrator-level privileges are required to exploit this vulnerability.
This vulnerability is due to improper validation of a file when it is read from system flash memory. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by copying a crafted file to the disk0: file system of an affected device. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to execute arbitrary code on the affected device after the next reload of the device, which could alter system behavior. Because the injected code could persist across device reboots, Cisco has raised the Security Impact Rating (SIR) of this advisory from Medium to High.
CISA: Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) and Firepower Threat Defense (FTD) contain a privilege escalation vulnerability that can allow local privilege escalation from Administrator to root.
What to do
Apply mitigations per vendor instructions or discontinue use of the product if mitigations are unavailable.
Deadline for US federal agencies: May 1, 2024
More exploited flaws from Cisco
| Added | Vulnerability | Product | Severity | Attack chance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 24, 2024 | ASA and FTD Denial-of-Service | Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) and Firepower Threat Defense (FTD) | Medium 5.8 | 16% |
| Apr 24, 2024 | ASA and FTD Denial of Service | Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) and Firepower Threat Defense (FTD) | High 8.6 | 70% |
| Feb 15, 2024 | ASA and FTD Information Disclosure | Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) and Firepower Threat Defense (FTD) | High 7.5 | 72% |
| Nov 3, 2021 | ASA and FTD Read-Only Path Traversal | Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) and Firepower Threat Defense (FTD) | High 7.5 | >99.9% |
| Nov 3, 2021 | ASA and FTD Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) | Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) and Firepower Threat Defense (FTD) | Medium 6.1 | 86% |
| Oct 14, 2026 | Relative Path Traversal | Secure Email Gateway | Critical 9.8 | 2.2% |
| Sep 30, 2026 | Hex Encoding | Catalyst SD-WAN Manager | Critical 9.8 | 39% |
| Sep 16, 2026 | Incorrect Use of Privileged APIs | Identity Services Engine | Critical 10.0 | 76% |
Sources: Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (CISA, public domain), CVE records (cve.org) and EPSS (FIRST). The chance of attacks is the EPSS estimate that someone will try to exploit the flaw in the next 30 days.