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CISA KEV · ACTIVELY EXPLOITED
HIGH severity

CVE-2020-3452 — Adaptive Security Appliance Software

HIGH

CVE-2020-3452 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) Improper Input Validation vulnerability in cisco adaptive security appliance software. It is in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2021-11-03) — treat it as actively exploited and patch now. A fix is available — see the affected versions and patch details below.

A vulnerability in the web services interface of Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software and Cisco Firepower Threat Defense (FTD) Software could allow an unauthenticated, remote…

Published
Updated
Affected
2 products
Patched
See advisory
Exploits
27 known
Exploitation data as of Oct 22, 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-2020-3452.

EPSS Exploitation Probability

via FIRST.org ↗
100.0%probability of exploitation in next 30 days
Very High Risk0.00%
Lower risk than most CVEs100th percentile — riskier than 100% of all scored CVEsHighest risk
92.8%95.2%97.6%100.0%94.5%100.0%Apr 26Aug 26Oct 26

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

How urgent is this, really

CVE-2020-3452 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 394,803 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 services interface of Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software and Cisco Firepower Threat Defense (FTD) Software could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to conduct directory traversal attacks and read sensitive files on a targeted system. The vulnerability is due to a lack of proper input validation of URLs in HTTP requests processed by an affected device. 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. The web services file system is enabled when the affected device is configured with either WebVPN or AnyConnect features. This vulnerability cannot be used to obtain access to ASA or FTD system files or underlying operating system (OS) files.

Affected Products

2 products · 12 configurations
OS
adaptive security appliance softwarecisco
≥ 9.14 && < 9.14.1.10
range
Application
secure firewall threat defensecisco
≥ 6.6.0 && < 6.6.0.1
range
Exploits & PoCs
27

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

EDB-49262webappshardware

Cisco ASA 9.14.1.10 and FTD 6.6.0.1 - Path Traversal (2)

by Freakyclown · Dec 15, 2020

Exploit-DB Source
EDB-48722webappshardware

Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance Software 9.11 - Local File Inclusion

by 0xmmnbassel · Jul 28, 2020

Exploit-DB Source
EDB-48871webappshardware

Cisco ASA and FTD 9.6.4.42 - Path Traversal

by 3ndG4me · Oct 12, 2020

Exploit-DB Source

Detection & mitigation playbook

Vendor / appliance

  1. Detect

    Inventory every cisco adaptive security appliance software deployment and check each version against the affected-products list above.

  2. Fix

    Apply the cisco adaptive security appliance software security patch or hotfix for CVE-2020-3452 on the affected version, following the vendor advisory for your exact build.

  3. Workarounds

    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. Alongside that, restrict the management interface to trusted networks and apply the vendor's recommended configuration mitigations.

How to detect CVE-2020-3452

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

nuclei -id cve-2020-3452 -u https://target
Template
Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA)/Firepower Threat Defense (FTD) - Local File Inclusion
Severity
high
Impact
An attacker can exploit this vulnerability to read sensitive files on the affected system.
Remediation
Apply the necessary security patches or updates provided by Cisco to fix the vulnerability.

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

Frequently Asked Questions

A vulnerability in the web services interface of Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software and Cisco Firepower Threat Defense (FTD) Software could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to conduct directory traversal attacks and read sensitive files on a targeted system. The vulnerability is due to a lack of proper input validation of URLs in HTTP requests processed by an affected device. 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
O3 Security · Runtime Protection

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CVE-2020-3452: High 7.5 (KEV)