CVE-2018-0233 Denial of service in Cisco Firepower Detection Engine
Remote attackers can cause memory exhaustion and denial of service in Cisco Firepower detection engines by sending crafted SSL connections.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Not needed
- Attackable
- Over the internet
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- None listed
What is CVE-2018-0233?
CVE-2018-0233 is a high-severity denial of service vulnerability in Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center, published on 19 Apr 2018. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.
Official description
A vulnerability in the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) packet reassembly functionality of the detection engine in Cisco Firepower System Software could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to cause the detection engine to consume excessive system memory on an affected device, which could cause a denial of service (DoS) condition. The vulnerability is due to the affected software improperly handling changes to SSL connection states. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending crafted SSL connections through an affected device. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to cause the detection engine to consume excessive system memory on the affected device, which could cause a DoS condition. The device may need to be reloaded manually to recover from this condition. This vulnerability affects Cisco Firepower System Software Releases 6.0.0 and later, running on any of the following Cisco products: Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) 5500-X Series Firewalls with FirePOWER Services, Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) 5500-X Series Next-Generation Firewalls, Advanced Malware Protection (AMP) for Networks, 7000 Series Appliances, Advanced Malware Protection (AMP) for Networks, 8000 Series Appliances, Firepower 4100 Series Appliances, FirePOWER 7000 Series Appliances, FirePOWER 8000 Series Appliances, Firepower 9300 Series Security Appliances, Firepower Threat Defense for Integrated Services Routers (ISRs), Firepower Threat Defense Virtual for VMware, Industrial Security Appliance 3000, Sourcefire 3D System Appliances. Cisco Bug IDs: CSCve23031.
Weakness: CWE-400
Which versions are affected by CVE-2018-0233?
It affects 1 product.
Products include Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center.
How do I fix CVE-2018-0233?
No fix has been published for CVE-2018-0233 yet. Limit exposure of the affected software until one is available.
Upgrade, then put limits on request size, rate and nesting depth so one client cannot exhaust the service. More about Denial of service.
Is CVE-2018-0233 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2018-0233 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Other vulnerabilities in Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center
- CVE-2026-20079 Cisco Firewall Management Center Authentication Bypass Using an Alternate Path or Channel
- CVE-2026-20131 Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center (FMC) Software and Cisco Security Cloud Control (SCC) Firewall Management Deserialization of Untrusted Data
- CVE-2026-20316 Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center Use of Hard-coded Password
- CVE-2025-20265 Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center Software Radius Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
- CVE-2024-20424 Command injection in Cisco Firepower Management Center
Sources
Also known as GHSA-wchf-39q2-hfmr.