# CVE-2022-20854: Denial of service in Cisco Firepower Management Center

> Unauthenticated remote attackers can cause a denial of service by sending high rates of crafted SSH connections, leading to resource exhaustion and device reboots.

- **Severity:** High 7.5 (`CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H`)
- **Exploited in the wild:** Not known
- **Login needed:** Not needed
- **Attackable:** Over the internet
- **Victim action needed:** Not needed
- **Fix available:** No
- **Published:** 10 Nov 2022
- **Updated:** 3 Aug 2024
- **Also known as:** GHSA-mm7h-p3v8-j9f3

## What is CVE-2022-20854?

CVE-2022-20854 is a high-severity denial of service vulnerability in Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center, published on 10 Nov 2022. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.

### Official description

A vulnerability in the processing of SSH connections of Cisco Firepower Management Center (FMC) and Cisco Firepower Threat Defense (FTD) Software could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to cause a denial of service (DoS) condition on an affected device.

 This vulnerability is due to improper error handling when an SSH session fails to be established. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a high rate of crafted SSH connections to the instance. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to cause resource exhaustion, resulting in a reboot on the affected device.

Weakness: CWE-755 (Improper Handling of Exceptional Conditions), CWE-400 (Uncontrolled Resource Consumption)

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2022-20854?

It affects 2 products.


Products: Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center, Cisco Secure Firewall Threat Defense.

## How do I fix CVE-2022-20854?

No fix has been published for CVE-2022-20854 yet. Limit exposure of the affected software until one is available.

## Is CVE-2022-20854 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2022-20854 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-2022-20854 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2022-20854 is a high-severity denial of service vulnerability in Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center, published on 10 Nov 2022. 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-2022-20854 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-2022-20854/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2022-20854/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2022-20854
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2022-20854
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2022-20854

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2022-20854/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.