CVE-2020-3452 — Cisco ASA and FTD Read-Only Path Traversal Vulnerability

Exploitation status

CVE-2020-3452 is listed in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, added 2021-11-03. Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) and Firepower Threat Defense (FTD) contain an improper input validation vulnerability when HTTP requests process URLs. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a crafted HTTP request containing directory traversal character sequences to an affected device. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to view arbitrary files within the web services file system on the targeted device.

Advisory facts

Vendor or project

Cisco

Affected product

Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) and Firepower Threat Defense (FTD)

Added to CISA KEV

2021-11-03

US federal remediation due date

2022-05-03

Ransomware association

Unknown

EPSS score

—

Weakness (CWE)

CWE-20

Remediation: the required action

Apply updates per vendor instructions.

Wording published by CISA for this catalog entry. It is the baseline action, not a decision about your environment: whether this exposure matters for you depends on where the affected component runs, what it is exposed to and who owns it.

From advisory to a decision you can defend

A catalog entry tells you a vulnerability is being exploited somewhere. It does not tell you whether it matters in your estate, who owns the fix, or what evidence an auditor will ask for later. That is the work VulnTrek does: it takes findings from the tools you already run, decides which exposure actually matters, routes it to an owner, keeps remediation human-approved and retains the lineage as evidence.