# CVE-2024-20481: Cisco ASA and FTD Denial-of-Service Vulnerability

> CVE-2024-20481: Cisco ASA and FTD Denial-of-Service Vulnerability. CVSS 5.8 (CVSS 3.1), in CISA KEV.

Canonical: https://rewindex.com/cve/CVE-2024-20481
Last updated: 2025-10-21T22:55:41Z

- Published: 2024-10-23 17:51 UTC · Updated: 2025-10-21 22:55 UTC · Assigner: cisco
- CVSS: 5.8 (CVSS 3.1) · Severity: Medium · Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:N/A:L
- EPSS: 15.9%, 97th percentile (scored 2026-10-25)
- CISA KEV: yes, added 2024-10-24, federal due date 2024-11-14, ransomware use: Unknown
- CWE: CWE-772

## Description

A vulnerability in the Remote Access VPN (RAVPN) service of Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software and Cisco Firepower Threat Defense (FTD) Software could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to cause a denial of service (DoS) of the RAVPN service. 
 This vulnerability is due to resource exhaustion. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a large number of VPN authentication requests to an affected device. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to exhaust resources, resulting in a DoS of the RAVPN service on the affected device. Depending on the impact of the attack, a reload of the device may be required to restore the RAVPN service. Services that are not related to VPN are not affected. 
 Cisco Talos discussed these attacks in the blog post Large-scale brute-force activity targeting VPNs, SSH services with commonly used login credentials.

## CISA required action

Apply mitigations per vendor instructions or discontinue use of the product if mitigations are unavailable.

## Affected vendors and products

- cisco: adaptive\_security\_appliance\_software
- cisco: firepower\_threat\_defense\_software
- Cisco: Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software
- Cisco: Cisco Firepower Threat Defense Software

## References

- [CVE record on cve.org](https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2024-20481)
- [NVD entry](https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2024-20481)
- [https://sec.cloudapps.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-asaftd-bf-dos-vDZhLqrW](https://sec.cloudapps.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-asaftd-bf-dos-vDZhLqrW)

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_Sources: CVE records from the CVE Program (cve.org). CVE® is a registered trademark of The MITRE Corporation. (https://www.cve.org/) This product uses data from the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD. (https://nvd.nist.gov/) Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog from CISA. (https://www.cisa.gov/known-exploited-vulnerabilities-catalog) EPSS scores from FIRST (Exploit Prediction Scoring System). (https://www.first.org/epss/)_


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Canonical: https://rewindex.com/cve/CVE-2024-20481 · Markdown: https://rewindex.com/cve/CVE-2024-20481.md · JSON: https://rewindex.com/api/v1/cves/CVE-2024-20481 · Data licensed CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) · Generated 2026-10-26T03:09:23.004Z