Threats / Cisco / CVE-2024-20359
CVE-2024-20359
· EUVD no mirror located
· GCVE no mirror located
Verified 2026-08-04
Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) and Firepower Threat vulnerability
Cisco ASA and FTD contain a privilege escalation vulnerability allowing local attackers to escalate from Administrator to root access.
Verdict
Today item — known-exploited.
A local privilege escalation flaw in Cisco ASA and FTD enables authenticated administrators to gain root-level control. The vulnerability is actively exploited in the wild, though exploitation requires prior local access.
CISA KEV Yes · 2024-04-245EPSS 0.19434 (verify live)6CVSS 63CISA SSVC Exploitation: active · Automatable: no · Impact: partial4
01
Is it exploitable?
— the evidence, ranked above the scoreReported exploitation
17 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 2024-04-24).
Probability (EPSS)
EPSS 0.19434 — modeled likelihood of exploitation activity.EPSS is a daily-changing model output — open the source for today's value.
Severity / affected
CVSS 6 (CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N) · Affected: Cisco, Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) and Firepower Threat Defense (FTD). Confirm exact fixed builds in the vendor advisory.CVSS — CNA-assigned (CVE.org), version 3.1, set at disclosure.
Weakness (CWE)
Mapped to CWE-94 Code Injection — weakness family: Injection.CWE — CNA-assigned (CVE.org); the weakness class drives how the flaw is exploited.
CISA SSVC (triage disposition)
Exploitation: active · Automatable: no · Technical Impact: partialCISA's own stakeholder-specific triage inputs, published in the CVE record (CISA Coordinator role). NOTE: this is CISA's three decision points; the final Act/Attend/Track decision also requires a Mission & Well-being input not published here, so no overall decision is asserted.
Currency of the record
CISA added this to its KEV catalog the same day the CVE record was published.KEV lag = CISA-KEV dateAdded − CVE.org datePublished; a floor on how long the known-exploited flaw sat in the public record before the federal catalog listed it. Severity/weakness here is CNA- or CISA-assigned (current at disclosure), independent of NVD's analysis backlog.
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 gain initial local access to the ASA or FTD device as an Administrator user.
Business
An insider or compromised administrator account provides the foothold needed for privilege escalation attacks.
2
Keys to the kingdom — privilege/identity takeover narrative 2
Attacker
I exploit the privilege escalation flaw to elevate my privileges from Administrator to root.
Business
Root-level compromise of security appliances enables complete device takeover and bypass of all security controls.
3
Lateral reach — past segmentation narrative 3
Attacker
I gain unrestricted control over the firewall's configuration, logging, and traffic inspection capabilities.
Business
Attackers can disable security policies, exfiltrate data, or redirect traffic undetected through the compromised perimeter device.
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