CVE-2025-20224 Denial of service in Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software
Unauthenticated remote attackers can cause a denial of service by sending crafted IKEv2 packets, exhausting memory and requiring a reboot.
- 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-2025-20224?
CVE-2025-20224 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance Software, published on 14 Aug 2025. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.
Official description
A vulnerability in the Internet Key Exchange Version 2 (IKEv2) module of Cisco Secure Firewall Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software and Secure Firewall Threat Defense (FTD) Software could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to trigger a memory leak, resulting in a denial of service (DoS) condition. This vulnerability is due to improper parsing of IKEv2 packets. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a continuous stream of crafted IKEv2 packets to an affected device. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to partially exhaust system memory, causing system instability like being unable to establish new IKEv2 VPN sessions. A manual reboot of the device is required to recover from this condition.
Weakness: CWE-401
Which versions are affected by CVE-2025-20224?
It affects 2 products.
Products include Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance Software, Cisco Secure Firewall Threat Defense.
How do I fix CVE-2025-20224?
No fix has been published for CVE-2025-20224 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-2025-20224 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2025-20224 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Other vulnerabilities in Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance Software
- CVE-2025-20333 Cisco Secure Firewall Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) and Secure Firewall Threat Defense (FTD) Buffer Overflow
- CVE-2016-6366 Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) SNMP Buffer Overflow
- CVE-2026-20349 Cisco Secure Firewall Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) and Secure Firewall Threat Defense (FTD) Heap Inspection
- CVE-2024-20353 Cisco ASA and FTD Denial of Service
- CVE-2016-6367 Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) CLI Remote Code Execution
All Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance Software vulnerabilities
Sources
Also known as GHSA-59m5-88pm-rmcf.