CVE-2020-3452 — Cisco ASA and FTD Read-Only Path Traversal Vulnerability
Overview
Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) and Firepower Threat Defense (FTD) contain an improper input validation vulnerability when HTTP requests process URLs. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a crafted HTTP request containing directory traversal character sequences to an affected device. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to view arbitrary files within the web...
Vulnerability details
- CVE ID
- CVE-2020-3452
- Vulnerability
- Cisco ASA and FTD Read-Only Path Traversal Vulnerability
- Vendor
- Cisco
- Affected products
- Cisco: Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) and Firepower Threat Defense (FTD)
- Severity
- HIGH
- Exploitation status
- Actively exploited in the wild (CISA KEV)
- Published
- 2021-11-03
Remediation guidance
CVE-2020-3452 is in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog — U.S. federal civilian agencies are required to remediate it under Binding Operational Directive 22-01. Treat it as a priority for every environment.
Apply the vendor's official security update for Cisco the affected product as soon as possible. Where a patch is unavailable, apply vendor mitigations or isolate/segment exposed systems.
Hunt for indicators of compromise tied to this vulnerability and confirm logging/EDR coverage on affected assets.
Authoritative references
Remediate CVE-2020-3452 — and stay ahead of the next one
CVE-2020-3452 is listed in the CISA KEV catalog as actively exploited — treat remediation as urgent. Scan your domain free to see whether CVE-2020-3452 and other Cisco issues affect you and get a prioritized remediation report (full report from ₹999) — or stream the full feed of 1,600+ actively-exploited CVEs straight into your SOC.
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