Cyber Resilience

CVE-2024-20260

Published
23 October 2024
Modified
15 April 2026
CVSS Score v3.1 8.6
Click a component to see what it means
Raw vectorCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:N/A:H
EPSS Score 0.0062 47th percentile
Risk Priority 62 floored blend · peak EPSS

Summary

CVE-2024-20260 is a high-severity Memory Allocation with Excessive Size Value (CWE-789) vulnerability in Cisco Adaptive Security (inferred from references). Its CVSS base score is 8.6 (High).

Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Endpoint Denial of Service (T1499); ranked at the 47th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

The strongest mitigations our analysis identified map to SI-10 (Information Input Validation) and SC-6 (Resource Availability) — see the control section below for these in your framework.

EU & UK References

Vulnerability Data

A vulnerability in the VPN and management web servers of the Cisco Adaptive Security Virtual Appliance (ASAv) and Cisco Secure Firewall Threat Defense Virtual (FTDv), formerly Cisco Firepower Threat Defense Virtual, platforms could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to cause…

more

the virtual devices to run out of system memory, which could cause SSL VPN connection processing to slow down and eventually cease all together. This vulnerability is due to a lack of proper memory management for new incoming SSL/TLS connections on the virtual platforms. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a large number of new incoming SSL/TLS connections to the targeted virtual platform. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to deplete system memory, resulting in a denial of service (DoS) condition. The memory could be reclaimed slowly if the attack traffic is stopped, but a manual reload may be required to restore operations quickly.

CWE(s)

Related Threats

MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques

T1499 Endpoint Denial of Service Impact
Adversaries may perform Endpoint Denial of Service (DoS) attacks to degrade or block the availability of services to users.
T1499.003 Application Exhaustion Flood Impact
Adversaries may target resource intensive features of applications to cause a denial of service (DoS), denying availability to those applications.
Derived from this CVE’s CWE(s) via the direct CWE→ATT&CK cross-walk.

CVEs Like This One

CVE-2026-55379Shared CWE-789
CVE-2026-53428Shared CWE-789
CVE-2026-33174Shared CWE-789
CVE-2026-65315Shared CWE-789
CVE-2026-35549Shared CWE-789
CVE-2026-40891Shared CWE-789
CVE-2025-26618Shared CWE-789
CVE-2025-27533Shared CWE-789
CVE-2025-20140Shared CWE-789
CVE-2021-47971Shared CWE-789

Affected Assets

Cisco
Adaptive Security
inferred from references and description; NVD did not file a CPE for this CVE

Mitigating Controls

Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI

Input validation directly rejects or bounds untrusted size values before any allocation occurs.

Resource quotas and priority allocation limit the system-wide impact of an oversized request.

Mitigating Controls (NIST CSF 2.0) AI

Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→CSF cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.

PR.PS-06 mostly match
prevents

Secure SDLC practices directly prevent coding flaws that trust unvalidated size values for allocations.

Mitigating Controls (ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Annex A) AI

Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→ISO cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.

finds

Security testing in development can detect and block excessive allocation flaws before deployment.

prevents

Secure development lifecycle includes input validation and size checks that prevent unbounded allocations.

prevents

Application security requirements mandate bounds checking on size parameters to avoid excessive memory allocation.

prevents

Secure architecture principles require resource-limit enforcement that mitigates uncontrolled memory requests.

prevents

Secure coding standards directly prohibit allocating memory from untrusted size values without validation.

none

Capacity management monitors overall resource use but does not prevent individual allocation bugs.

References