Cyber Resilience

CVE-2026-20050

Cisco Secure Firewall Threat Defense 7.1.0 – 7.2.11

Published
04 March 2026
Modified
11 August 2026
Patch / advisory
View advisory
CVSS Score v3.1 6.8
Click a component to see what it means
Raw vectorCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:N/A:H
EPSS Score 0.0038 31th percentile
Risk Priority 49 floored blend · peak EPSS

Summary

CVE-2026-20050 is a medium-severity Improper Resource Shutdown or Release (CWE-404) vulnerability in Cisco Secure Firewall Threat Defense. Its CVSS base score is 6.8 (Medium).

Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Exploitation for Privilege Escalation (T1068); ranked at the 31th 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 SA-8 (Security and Privacy Engineering Principles) — see the control section below for these in your framework.

EU & UK References

Vulnerability Data

A vulnerability in the Do Not Decrypt exclusion feature of the SSL decryption feature of Cisco Secure Firewall Threat Defense (FTD) Software could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to cause a denial of service (DoS) condition on an affected device.…

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This vulnerability is due to improper memory management during the inspection of TLS 1.2 encrypted traffic. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending crafted TLS 1.2 encrypted traffic through an affected device. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to cause a reload of an affected device. Note: This vulnerability only affects traffic that is encrypted by TLS 1.2. Other versions of TLS are not affected.

CWE(s)
CWE-404

Related Threats

MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques

T1068 Exploitation for Privilege Escalation Privilege Escalation
Adversaries may exploit software vulnerabilities in an attempt to elevate privileges.
attack.mitre.org →
T1190 Exploit Public-Facing Application Initial Access
Adversaries may attempt to exploit a weakness in an Internet-facing host or system to initially access a network.
attack.mitre.org →
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.
attack.mitre.org →
T1499.001 OS Exhaustion Flood Impact
Adversaries may launch a denial of service (DoS) attack targeting an endpoint's operating system (OS).
attack.mitre.org →
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.
attack.mitre.org →
Derived from this CVE’s CWE(s) via the direct CWE→ATT&CK cross-walk.

CVEs Like This One

CVE-2023-20042Same product: Cisco Secure Firewall Threat Defense
CVE-2024-20351Same product: Cisco Secure Firewall Threat Defense
CVE-2023-20083Same product: Cisco Secure Firewall Threat Defense
CVE-2026-20017Same product: Cisco Secure Firewall Threat Defense
CVE-2023-20270Same product: Cisco Secure Firewall Threat Defense
CVE-2024-20431Same product: Cisco Secure Firewall Threat Defense
CVE-2025-20127Same product: Cisco Secure Firewall Threat Defense
CVE-2024-20339Same product: Cisco Secure Firewall Threat Defense
CVE-2023-20267Same product: Cisco Secure Firewall Threat Defense
CVE-2024-20261Same product: Cisco Secure Firewall Threat Defense

Affected Assets

cisco
secure firewall threat defense
7.1.0 — 7.2.11 · 7.3.0 — 7.4.4 · 7.6.0 — 7.6.4

Mitigating Controls

Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI

SA-11 Developer Testing and Evaluation good match

Developer testing and evaluation can discover missing or incorrect resource releases after code is written.

SA-8 Security and Privacy Engineering Principles partial match

Engineering principles can require explicit resource acquisition/release patterns that stop improper shutdown from being introduced.

SC-6 Resource Availability partial match

Priority-based resource allocation limits the blast radius when released resources are not returned to the pool.

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 include coding standards for correct resource allocation and release.

DE.CM-09 partial match
prevents

Runtime monitoring can detect resource exhaustion caused by improper shutdown or release.

ID.AM-08 partial match
prevents

Lifecycle management of assets can encompass proper resource release at end-of-life or shutdown.

PR.IR-04 partial match
prevents

Capacity management helps surface leaks from unreleased resources but does not prevent the coding flaw.

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.

A.5.37 Documented operating procedures partial match
prevents

Including restart, recovery and media-handling instructions reduces the likelihood that resources or sensitive data will be left in an exposed or improperly released state after a failure.

References