Threats / Cisco / CVE-2024-20481
CVE-2024-20481
· EUVD no mirror located
· GCVE no mirror located
Verified 2026-06-22
Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) and Firepower Threat vulnerability
Cisco ASA and FTD contain a resource leak vulnerability in RAVPN that allows unauthenticated remote attackers to trigger denial-of-service conditions.
Verdict
Today item — known-exploited.
An unauthenticated remote attacker can exploit improper resource management in the RAVPN service to exhaust system resources and cause service unavailability. This vulnerability is actively exploited in the wild.
01
Is it exploitable?
— the evidence, ranked above the scoreReported exploitation
3 independent public reports of in-the-wild exploitation are cataloged.Distinct reporting sources (vendor, incident response, government); open them for the underlying claims.
Exploited in the wild
Listed in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2024-10-24).
Probability (EPSS)
EPSS 0.15953 — modeled likelihood of exploitation activity.EPSS is a daily-changing model output — open the source for today's value.
Severity / affected
Affected: Cisco, Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) and Firepower Threat Defense (FTD). Confirm exact fixed builds in the vendor advisory.
Weakness (CWE)
Mapped to CWE-772 Missing Release of Resource — weakness family: Resource / availability.CWE assignment from the public NVD record; the weakness class drives how the flaw is exploited.
02
Who’s exploiting it?
— attribution turns risk into urgencyAttribution not established
No confirmed (advisory-backed) threat-actor attribution is established for this record. Absence of a named actor is not absence of compromise — see Coverage & confidence.
03
Why it matters
— the attack path, told twice: adversary, then board1
Front door — unauthenticated access narrative 1
Attacker
I send crafted network traffic to the RAVPN service without authentication.
Business
The organization loses remote access capabilities as the VPN service becomes unavailable.
2
Keys to the kingdom — privilege/identity takeover narrative 2
Attacker
I trigger repeated resource allocation failures that are not properly released by the application.
Business
System resources are exhausted, degrading or disabling critical security appliance functions.
3
Lateral reach — past segmentation narrative 3
Attacker
I maintain the attack to sustain the denial-of-service condition.
Business
Remote workers and branch offices cannot establish secure connections, impacting business continuity.
04
What to do
— defensible action- Remediate per the vendor advisory — confirm the fixed build for your version and verify exposure.1
Say it to the boardA vulnerability with this evidence profile is a defensible budget line, not a backlog ticket — fund the change against the proof above.
05