CVE-2020-5946 Denial of service in BIG-IP (Advanced WAF, FPS)

What is CVE-2020-5946?

CVE-2020-5946 is a high-severity denial of service vulnerability in F5 Big-Ip Advanced Web Application Firewall, published on 5 Nov 2020. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.

Official description

In BIG-IP Advanced WAF and FPS versions 16.0.0-16.0.0.1, 15.1.0-15.1.0.5, and 14.1.0-14.1.2.7, under some circumstances, certain format client-side alerts sent to the BIG-IP virtual server configured with DataSafe may cause the Traffic Management Microkernel (TMM) to restart, resulting in a Denial-of-Service (DoS).

Which versions are affected by CVE-2020-5946?

It affects 2 products.

Products include F5 Big-Ip Advanced Web Application Firewall, F5 Big-Ip Fraud Protection Service.

How do I fix CVE-2020-5946?

No fix has been published for CVE-2020-5946 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-2020-5946 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2020-5946 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Other vulnerabilities in F5 Big-Ip Advanced Web Application Firewall

• CVE-2021-23031 Privilege escalation in BIG-IP Advanced WAF and BIG-IP ASM Critical 9.9
• CVE-2021-23029 Server-side request forgery in BIG-IP Advanced WAF and BIG-IP ASM High 8.8
• CVE-2021-23014 Missing authorization in BIG-IP ASM/Advanced WAF High 8.8
• CVE-2021-22993 Cross-site scripting in BIG-IP Advanced WAF and BIG-IP ASM High 8.8
• CVE-2026-40060 BIG-IP Advanced WAF and ASM vulnerability High 8.7

All F5 Big-Ip Advanced Web Application Firewall vulnerabilities

Sources

• CVE record
• NVD
• OSV
• GitHub advisory
• How this page is made

Also known as GHSA-fc22-93xp-cww8.