CVE-2020-3164 Cisco ESA, Cisco WSA, and Cisco SMA GUI Denial of Service Vulnerability
Unauthenticated remote attackers can cause high CPU usage and degrade performance on Cisco ESA, WSA, and SMA devices via malformed HTTP requests.
- 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-2020-3164?
CVE-2020-3164 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Cisco Email Security Appliance, published on 4 Mar 2020. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.
Official description
A vulnerability in the web-based management interface of Cisco AsyncOS for Cisco Email Security Appliance (ESA), Cisco Web Security Appliance (WSA), and Cisco Content Security Management Appliance (SMA) could allow an unauthenticated remote attacker to cause high CPU usage on an affected device, resulting in a denial of service (DoS) condition. The vulnerability is due to improper validation of specific HTTP request headers. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a malformed HTTP request to an affected device. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to trigger a prolonged status of high CPU utilization relative to the GUI process(es). Upon successful exploitation of this vulnerability, an affected device will still be operative, but its response time and overall performance may be degraded.
Weakness: CWE-20
Which versions are affected by CVE-2020-3164?
It affects 4 products.
Products include Cisco Cloud Email Security, Cisco Content Security Management Appliance, Cisco Email Security Appliance, Cisco Web Security Appliance.
How do I fix CVE-2020-3164?
No fix has been published for CVE-2020-3164 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-2020-3164 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2020-3164 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Other vulnerabilities in Cisco Email Security Appliance
Sources
Also known as GHSA-2whj-38mw-g8jm.