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Troubleshoot Troubleshooting Troubleshoot an Secure Firewall ASA Device Cisco ASA Advisory cisco-sa-20180129-asa1

Last updated: Aug 08, 2025

Cisco ASA Advisory cisco-sa-20180129-asa1

The Cisco Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) published the security advisory cisco-sa-20180129-asa1 which describes a critical-severity ASA and Firepower security vulnerability. Read the entire PSIRT team advisory for a full explanation of what ASA and Firepower hardware, software, and configurations are affected.

If you determine that your ASAs are impacted by the advisory, you can upgrade your ASAs to the patched version using Security Cloud Control. Use this process:

Procedure

1

Configure a DNS server on each ASA that is affected.
2

Return to the advisory to determine which software patch you need.

3

See Upgrade ASA and ASDM Images on a Single ASA for topics that describe how to use Security Cloud Control to upgrade your ASAs to the fixed releases listed in the ASA advisory. Start with the upgrade prerequisites and then read about upgrading individual ASAs, upgrading ASAs in an active-standby configuration, or upgrading ASAs in bulk.

For your convenience, here is the summary of the security advisory that Cisco reported:

UPDATED 2/5/2018: After further investigation, Cisco has identified additional attack vectors and features that are affected by this vulnerability. In addition, it was also found that the original fix was incomplete so new fixed code versions are now available. Please see the Fixed Software section for more information. A vulnerability in the XML parser of Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to cause a reload of the affected system or to remotely execute code. It was also possible that the ASA could stop processing incoming Virtual Private Network (VPN) authentication requests due to a low memory condition. The vulnerability is due to an issue with allocating and freeing memory when processing a malicious XML payload. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a crafted XML packet to a vulnerable interface on an affected system. An exploit could allow the attacker to execute arbitrary code and obtain full control of the system, cause a reload of the affected device or stop processing of incoming VPN authentication requests. To be vulnerable the ASA must have Secure Socket Layer (SSL) services or IKEv2 Remote Access VPN services enabled on an interface. The risk of the vulnerability being exploited also depends on the accessibility of the interface to the attacker. For a comprehensive list of vulnerable ASA features please refer to the table in the Vulnerable Products section. Cisco has released software updates that address this vulnerability. There are no workarounds that address all the features that are affected by this vulnerability. This advisory is available at the following link: https://tools.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-20180129-asa1
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