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Mallory
Medium

DoS via crafted OSPF LSU packets in Cisco Secure Firewall ASA/FTD (heap corruption)

IdentifiersCVE-2026-20025CWE-20

A vulnerability in OSPF processing in Cisco Secure Firewall ASA Software and Cisco Secure FTD Software allows an authenticated adjacent attacker to trigger an unexpected device reload (denial of service). The issue is caused by insufficient input validation when processing OSPF link-state update (LSU) packets; crafted LSU packets can corrupt the heap, leading to a reload. Exploitation requires knowledge of the OSPF secret key.

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ANALYST BRIEF

Impact, mitigation & remediation

What it means. What to do now. Patch path, mitigations, and the assume-compromise checklist.

Impact

What an attacker gets, and what they’ve been doing with it.

Successful exploitation can corrupt heap memory and force the affected ASA/FTD device to reload unexpectedly, resulting in a denial-of-service condition (loss of availability and disruption of firewall/routing functions until recovery).

Mitigation

If you can’t patch tonight, do this now.

Limit OSPF adjacency exposure to trusted, controlled L2/L3 segments; restrict which neighbors can form OSPF adjacencies (e.g., interface/neighbor filtering and infrastructure ACLs); protect and rotate OSPF authentication keys; monitor for anomalous OSPF LSU activity and rate/contain OSPF traffic where feasible to reduce the chance of crafted LSU delivery from adjacent networks.

Remediation

Patch, then assume compromise.

Apply Cisco-provided fixed software updates for Cisco Secure Firewall ASA and Cisco Secure FTD that address the OSPF LSU input validation flaw (per Cisco security advisory for the ASA/FTD OSPF issue).
PUBLIC EXPLOITS

Exploits

No public exploits tracked yet. Mallory keeps watching.

VALID 0 / 0 TOTALView more in app

No public exploit code observed for this vulnerability.

EXPOSURE SURFACE

Affected products & vendors

Products and vendors Mallory has correlated with this vulnerability. Open in Mallory to drill down to specific CPE configurations and version ranges.

VendorProductType
Cisco SystemsAdaptive Security Appliance Softwareoperating_system
Cisco SystemsFirepower Threat Defense Softwareapplication
Cisco SystemsSecure Firewall Asa Softwareapplication
Cisco SystemsSecure Ftd Softwareapplication

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What this page doesn’t show

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Exposure mapping

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Threat actor evidence

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Associated malware

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Detection signatures

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Vendor-by-vendor mapping

Cross-references every affected SKU, including bundled OEM variants.

Social activity1

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