CVE-2025-20238: cisco cisco adaptive security appliance (asa) software

Vulnerability summary

CVE-2025-20238 is a medium (CVSS 6.0) vulnerability in cisco cisco adaptive security appliance (asa) software. EPSS estimates a 0.15% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 3.4% of scored vulnerabilities.

Timeline

1. 14-08-2025
   PublishedVulnerability first disclosed.
2. 26-02-2026
   Last modifiedVulnerability information updated.

Description

A vulnerability in Cisco Secure Firewall Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software and Cisco Secure Firewall Threat Defense (FTD) Software could allow an authenticated, local attacker to execute arbitrary commands on the underlying operating system with root-level privileges. To exploit this vulnerability, the attacker must have valid administrative credentials. This vulnerability is due to insufficient input validation of commands that are supplied by the user. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by authenticating to a device and submitting crafted input for specific commands. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to execute commands on the underlying operating system as root.

• CWE-1244Internal Asset Exposed to Unsafe Debug Access Level or StateThe product uses physical debug or test interfaces with support for multiple access levels, but it assigns the wrong debug access level to an internal asset, providing unintended access to the asset from untrusted debug agents.