CVE-2018-15460 Cisco Email Security Appliance URL Filtering Denial of Service Vulnerability

High 8.6 Published 10 Jan 2019 Updated 19 Nov 2024

Unauthenticated remote attackers can cause a denial of service on Cisco Email Security Appliances by sending emails with many whitelisted URLs.

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-2018-15460?

CVE-2018-15460 is a high-severity denial of service vulnerability in Cisco Asyncos, 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 email message filtering feature of Cisco AsyncOS Software for Cisco Email Security Appliances (ESA) could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to cause the CPU utilization to increase to 100 percent, causing a denial of service (DoS) condition on an affected device. The vulnerability is due to improper filtering of email messages that contain references to whitelisted URLs. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a malicious email message that contains a large number of whitelisted URLs. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to cause a sustained DoS condition that could force the affected device to stop scanning and forwarding email messages.

Weakness: CWE-770, CWE-20

Which versions are affected by CVE-2018-15460?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Cisco Asyncos.

How do I fix CVE-2018-15460?

No fix has been published for CVE-2018-15460 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-2018-15460 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2018-15460 in the wild and no public exploit code.

All Cisco Asyncos vulnerabilities

Sources

Also known as GHSA-q66v-34fh-vw9m.