CVE-2024-20485
Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance Software 9.12.1 … 9.8.4.8
Raw vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:NSummary
CVE-2024-20485 is a medium-severity Code Injection (CWE-94) vulnerability in Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance Software. Its CVSS base score is 6.0 (Medium).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Command and Scripting Interpreter (T1059); ranked at the 10th 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 SA-11 (Developer Testing and Evaluation) and SI-10 (Information Input Validation) — see the control section below for these in your framework.
OWASP Top 10 for Web (2025)
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2024-18200
Vulnerability Data
A vulnerability in the VPN web server of Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software and Cisco Firepower Threat Defense (FTD) Software could allow an authenticated, local attacker to execute arbitrary code with root-level privileges. Administrator-level privileges are required to exploit…
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this vulnerability. This vulnerability is due to improper validation of a specific file when it is read from system flash memory. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by restoring a crafted backup file to an affected device. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to execute arbitrary code on the affected device after the next reload of the device, which could alter system behavior. Because the injected code could persist across device reboots, Cisco has raised the Security Impact Rating (SIR) of this advisory from Medium to High.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Control response
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V1.3.1
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI
Developer testing and evaluation finds code paths that accept and execute externally influenced strings.
Input validation directly stops untrusted data from being used to construct executable code without neutralization.
Least privilege limits the damage an injected code fragment can perform once executed.
Requiring documented secure development standards and tools enforces use of safe code-generation APIs and escaping.
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's SDLC practices directly target injection flaws via secure coding and testing (mostly), yet as a single broad outcome it leaves many code-generation specifics unaddressed (partial).
PR.DS-10 protects runtime data confidentiality/integrity but has no bearing on neutralizing externally influenced input during code generation, so neither direction shows any preventive effect.
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.
Banning unapproved code samples and unauthenticated web services, combined with secure-coding standards and SAST, prevents the dynamic generation or inclusion of attacker-supplied code.
Controls that restrict unauthorized or malicious code from being introduced via external networks or removable media limit opportunities for an attacker to inject and execute arbitrary code.