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CVE-2023-20269

Exploitation: active CVSS 5.0 MEDIUM Ransomware: known use

CVSS base score: 5.0 (Medium) vendor CNA · v3.1

Score assigned by the vendor's own CVE Numbering Authority (CNA); CISA's Vulnrichment program adds a score only when the CNA omits one.

Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance and Firepower Threat Defense Unauthorized Access Vulnerability

Vendor: Cisco   Product: Adaptive Security Appliance and Firepower Threat Defense

Description

Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance and Firepower Threat Defense contain an unauthorized access vulnerability that could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to conduct a brute force attack in an attempt to identify valid username and password combinations or establish a clientless SSL VPN session with an unauthorized user.

Lifecycle Timeline

Each milestone comes from a different source, so gaps between them are gaps in what those sources publish, not evidence that nothing happened. EPSS history for this CVE holds 171 points from 2023-09-09, tracked daily from 2026-09-09; earlier points are weekly, which dates a spike to within a week. Peak probability 25.6% on 2026-09-09.

Published Applicability

CVE List v5 (CNA container) 246 affected · 0 fixed · 0 not affected

Check whether a specific version is affected →

What each source publishes about which product versions carry this vulnerability, kept as written rather than merged. Absence here means no source has published applicability data, not that nothing is affected.

Research & News Coverage

No mentions found in monitored research blogs or news feeds.

Detection & Exploitation

Scan
none published
Exploit / Pen Test
none published
Network IDS/IPS
none published
Host / SIEM
none published

Blind spot. No public detection — verify by version/patch. Nothing in the monitored scanner, IDS, SIEM or offensive-tool collections references this CVE, so exposure has to be established from asset inventory and patch level rather than from a signature.

Coverage across public collections only: Nuclei and OpenVAS NVT (scan); Snort and Suricata ET Open (network); Sigma and YARA (host/SIEM); Metasploit, Exploit-DB and public GitHub repositories (exploit). Absence here means nothing public was found, not that detection is impossible.
GitHub PoC repositories are collected automatically by PoC-in-GitHub (CC0) and are not vetted: some are fakes and some are malware. Treat them as evidence that code was published, not as code to run.
OpenVAS coverage derives from the Greenbone Community Feed, made available under the Open Database License (ODbL) v1.0; its individual Vulnerability Tests are licensed GNU GPL v2.

CISA Assessment (Vulnrichment / SSVC)

active
no
partial
—
5.0 MEDIUM
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:L/A:N
CWE-288 — Authentication Bypass Using an Alternate Path or Channel
2024-10-23

D3FEND Countermeasures

Defensive techniques inferred by MITRE D3FEND from the underlying weakness (CWE-288) — general hardening and detection guidance for this weakness class, not a vendor patch for this specific CVE.

KEV Catalog Status

2023-09-13
2023-10-04
Known

Listed By

SourceDateRecord
CISA KEV 2023-09-13 source record →
CISA Vulnrichment 2024-10-23 source record →

Referenced in Advisories

DateAdvisoryIssuer
2025-11-13 #StopRansomware: Akira Ransomware FBI
2024-04-18 #StopRansomware: Akira Ransomware CISA

Weaponization Timeline — Offensive & Testing Tools

No exploit-tool sightings recorded for this CVE.

Evidence tiers are explained on the About page — a merged Metasploit module is far stronger evidence than a distro package mention.

External References