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CISA KEV · ACTIVELY EXPLOITED
HIGH severity

CVE-2018-0296

HIGH

CVE-2018-0296 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) Improper Input Validation vulnerability. It is in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2021-11-03) — treat it as actively exploited and patch now. No vendor fix is recorded yet; mitigation options are listed below.

A vulnerability in the web interface of the Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to cause an affected device to reload unexpectedly,…

Published
Updated
Affected
3 products
Patched
See advisory
Exploits
12 known
Exploitation data as of Oct 19, 2026 · OSV.dev, NVD, CISA KEV, FIRST.org (EPSS)

Exploitation Status

Actively exploited in the wild

  • Confirmed by CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on 2021-11-03. Federal agencies were required to remediate by 2022-05-03.
  • CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.

Exploitation and automatability from CISA (KEV catalog and SSVC triage) for CVE-2018-0296.

EPSS Exploitation Probability

via FIRST.org ↗
99.9%probability of exploitation in next 30 days
Very High Risk-0.00%
Lower risk than most CVEs100th percentile — riskier than 100% of all scored CVEsHighest risk
92.8%95.2%97.6%100.0%94.4%99.9%Apr 26Aug 26Oct 26

Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.

How urgent is this, really

CVE-2018-0296 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). In the shaded patch-first corner (EPSS 50%+, CVSS 7.0+).

Where this sits among everything scored

Of 394,415 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the ≥ 90% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.

Description

A vulnerability in the web interface of the Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to cause an affected device to reload unexpectedly, resulting in a denial of service (DoS) condition. It is also possible on certain software releases that the ASA will not reload, but an attacker could view sensitive system information without authentication by using directory traversal techniques. The vulnerability is due to lack of proper input validation of the HTTP URL. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a crafted HTTP request to an affected device. An exploit could allow the attacker to cause a DoS condition or unauthenticated disclosure of information. This vulnerability applies to IPv4 and IPv6 HTTP traffic. This vulnerability affects Cisco ASA Software and Cisco Firepower Threat Defense (FTD) Software that is running on the following Cisco products: 3000 Series Industrial Security Appliance (ISA), ASA 1000V Cloud Firewall, ASA 5500 Series Adaptive Security Appliances, ASA 5500-X Series Next-Generation Firewalls, ASA Services Module for Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series Switches and Cisco 7600 Series Routers, Adaptive Security Virtual Appliance (ASAv), Firepower 2100 Series Security Appliance, Firepower 4100 Series Security Appliance, Firepower 9300 ASA Security Module, FTD Virtual (FTDv). Cisco Bug IDs: CSCvi16029.

Affected Products

3 products · 13 configurations
OS
adaptive security appliance softwarecisco
≥ 9.9 && < 9.9.2.1
range
Application
firepower threat defensecisco
2 versions
6.2.3-85.026.2.3-851
Application
secure firewall threat defensecisco
≥ 6.2.1 && < 6.2.2.3
2 versions
6.2.36.2.3.1
Exploits & PoCs
12

Research use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.

EDB-47220webappshardware

Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance - Path Traversal (Metasploit)

by Angelo Ruwantha · Aug 12, 2019

EDB-44956webappshardware

Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance - Path Traversal

by Yassine Aboukir · Jun 28, 2018

Detection & mitigation playbook

Vulnerability
  1. Detect

    Identify every host running the affected component and compare the installed build against the fixed version below — for source-built or distro-packaged software the version string, not a lockfile, is the source of truth (`dpkg -l`, `rpm -q`, or the binary's own `--version`).

  2. Remediation status

    No fixed release is recorded for CVE-2018-0296 yet. Track the upstream advisory, and apply the exposure-reduction steps below in the meantime.

  3. Mitigate without a patch

    Resolve every user-supplied path to its canonical form and reject anything that escapes the intended directory, and run the component under an account that has no read or write access outside the directory it legitimately serves.

How to detect CVE-2018-0296

A community-maintained Nuclei template exists for this CVE. You can scan for it directly:

nuclei -id cve-2018-0296 -u https://target
Template
Cisco ASA - Local File Inclusion
Severity
high
Impact
An attacker can read sensitive files on the Cisco ASA firewall, potentially leading to unauthorized access or information disclosure.
Remediation
Apply the necessary security patches or updates provided by Cisco to fix the local file inclusion vulnerability.

Template by ProjectDiscovery nuclei-templates (organiccrap), MIT licensed. View the full template. Scan only systems you are authorised to test.

Frequently Asked Questions

A vulnerability in the web interface of the Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to cause an affected device to reload unexpectedly, resulting in a denial of service (DoS) condition. It is also possible on certain software releases that the ASA will not reload, but an attacker could view sensitive system information without authentication by using directory traversal techniques. The vulnerability is due to lack of proper input validation of the HTTP URL. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a crafted HTTP request to an affec
O3 Security · Impact-Aware SCA

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CVE-2018-0296: High 7.5 (KEV)