CVE-2026-20248: cisco cisco secure firewall adaptive security appliance (asa) software Signed to Unsigned Conversion Error

Vulnerability summary

CVE-2026-20248 is a medium (CVSS 6.8) Signed to Unsigned Conversion Error vulnerability in cisco cisco secure firewall adaptive security appliance (asa) software. EPSS estimates a 0.34% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 26.1% of scored vulnerabilities.

Timeline

1. 16-09-2026
   PublishedVulnerability first disclosed.
2. 18-09-2026
   Last modifiedVulnerability information updated.

Description

A vulnerability in the DNS over TCP implementation of Cisco Secure Firewall Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software and Cisco Secure Firewall Threat Defense (FTD) Software could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to cause the TCP DNS response handler to unexpectedly restart, causing the device to reload. This vulnerability is due to a logic error when parsing a DNS query and tracking the size of the incoming buffers. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by formatting a crafted reply to a DNS query sent from the targeted device. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to cause the device to reload, causing a denial of service (DoS) condition. Note: The attacker must be able to respond to DNS queries from the device, either by controlling the DNS service or through a machine-in-the-middle attack.

• CWE-195Signed to Unsigned Conversion ErrorThe product uses a signed primitive and performs a cast to an unsigned primitive, which can produce an unexpected value if the value of the signed primitive can not be represented using an unsigned primitive.