# CVE-2018-15458: Cisco Firepower Management Center Disk Utilization Denial of Service Vulnerability

> An unauthenticated remote attacker can cause a denial of service by triggering unbounded log writes in Cisco FMC when Shell Access Filter is used with specific remote authentication.

- **Severity:** Medium 5.3 (`CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L`)
- **Exploited in the wild:** Not known
- **Login needed:** Not needed
- **Attackable:** Over the internet
- **Victim action needed:** Not needed
- **Fix available:** No
- **Published:** 10 Jan 2019
- **Updated:** 19 Nov 2024
- **Also known as:** GHSA-jm4h-6jwp-8h23

## What is CVE-2018-15458?

CVE-2018-15458 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center, published on 10 Jan 2019. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.

### Official description

A vulnerability in the Shell Access Filter feature of Cisco Firepower Management Center (FMC), when used in conjunction with remote authentication, could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to cause high disk utilization, resulting in a denial of service (DoS) condition. The vulnerability occurs because the configuration of the Shell Access Filter, when used with a specific type of remote authentication, can cause a system file to have unbounded writes. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a steady stream of remote authentication requests to the appliance when the specific configuration is applied. Successful exploitation could allow the attacker to increase the size of a system log file so that it consumes most of the disk space. The lack of available disk space could lead to a DoS condition in which the device functions could operate abnormally, making the device unstable.

Weakness: CWE-770 (Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling), CWE-399

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2018-15458?

It affects 1 product.


Products: Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center.

## How do I fix CVE-2018-15458?

No fix has been published for CVE-2018-15458 yet. Limit exposure of the affected software until one is available.

## Is CVE-2018-15458 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2018-15458 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Other vulnerabilities in Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center

- [CVE-2026-20079](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-20079/): Cisco Firewall Management Center Authentication Bypass Using an Alternate Path or Channel (critical 10.0, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2026-20131](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-20131/): Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center (FMC) Software and Cisco Security Cloud Control (SCC) Firewall Management Deserialization of Untrusted Data (critical 10.0, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2026-20316](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-20316/): Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center Use of Hard-coded Password (medium 5.3, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2025-20265](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2025-20265/): Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center Software Radius Remote Code Execution Vulnerability (critical 10.0)
- [CVE-2024-20424](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2024-20424/): Command injection in Cisco Firepower Management Center (critical 9.9)

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2018-15458 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2018-15458 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center, published on 10 Jan 2019. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.
Exploitation: There is no known exploitation of CVE-2018-15458 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected product: Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center. No package-level version data is available, so check the vendor advisory linked from the reference page.

Task:
1. Search the dependency manifests and lockfiles (for example package.json, package-lock.json, requirements.txt, poetry.lock, uv.lock, pom.xml, build.gradle, go.mod, Cargo.lock, Gemfile.lock) and any Dockerfiles for the affected packages, including transitive dependencies.
2. If an affected version is in use, upgrade it to the fixed version for its release line with the project's package manager, so the lockfile is regenerated. Prefer the smallest upgrade that fixes it.
3. If there is no fix, or the upgrade would break the build, do not guess: explain the risk and the safest workaround instead.
4. Run the tests and summarise what changed and why.
5. If nothing in the project is affected, say so and change nothing.

Reference: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2018-15458/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2018-15458/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2018-15458
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2018-15458
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2018-15458

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From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2018-15458/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.