# CVE-2024-20508: Denial of service in Cisco UTD SNORT IPS Engine Software

> Remote attackers can cause a Snort process reload, leading to denial of service or security policy bypass depending on fail-open or fail-close configuration.

- **Severity:** Medium 5.8 (`CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:L/A:N`)
- **Exploited in the wild:** Not known
- **Login needed:** Not needed
- **Attackable:** Over the internet
- **Victim action needed:** Not needed
- **Fix available:** No
- **Published:** 25 Sep 2024
- **Updated:** 12 Nov 2024
- **Also known as:** GHSA-fmxj-97w3-xq3m

## What is CVE-2024-20508?

CVE-2024-20508 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Cisco UTD SNORT IPS Engine Software, published on 25 Sep 2024. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.

### Official description

A vulnerability in Cisco Unified Threat Defense (UTD) Snort Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) Engine for Cisco IOS XE Software could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to bypass configured security policies or cause a denial of service (DoS) condition on an affected device.

This vulnerability is due to insufficient validation of HTTP requests when they are processed by Cisco UTD Snort IPS Engine. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a crafted HTTP request through an affected device. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to trigger a reload of the Snort process.  If the action in case of Cisco UTD Snort IPS Engine failure is set to the default, fail-open, successful exploitation of this vulnerability could allow the attacker to bypass configured security policies. If the action in case of Cisco UTD Snort IPS Engine failure is set to fail-close, successful exploitation of this vulnerability could cause traffic that is configured to be inspected by Cisco UTD Snort IPS Engine to be dropped.

Weakness: CWE-787 (Out-of-bounds Write), CWE-122 (Heap-based Buffer Overflow)

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2024-20508?

It affects 1 product.


Products: Cisco Unified Threat Defense Snort Intrusion Prevention System Engine.

## How do I fix CVE-2024-20508?

No fix has been published for CVE-2024-20508 yet. Limit exposure of the affected software until one is available.

## Is CVE-2024-20508 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2024-20508 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2024-20508 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2024-20508 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Cisco UTD SNORT IPS Engine Software, published on 25 Sep 2024. 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-2024-20508 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected product: Cisco UTD SNORT IPS Engine Software. 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-2024-20508/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2024-20508/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2024-20508
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2024-20508
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2024-20508

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From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2024-20508/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.