CVE-2018-15460

Cisco Email Security Appliance URL Filtering Denial of Service Vulnerability

HIGH
8.6
CVSS Score
Published: January 10, 2019 at 10:00 PM UTC
Updated: June 17, 2026 at 01:42 AM UTC
2 products affected across 1 vendorAsyncosEmail Security Appliance

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Severity
HIGH8.6
Exploit prediction
EPSS 3%
SSVC
No known exploit

Description

A vulnerability in the email message filtering feature of Cisco AsyncOS Software for Cisco Email Security Appliances (ESA) could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to cause the CPU utilization to increase to 100 percent, causing a denial of service (DoS) condition on an affected device. The vulnerability is due to improper filtering of email messages that contain references to whitelisted URLs. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a malicious email message that contains a large number of whitelisted URLs. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to cause a sustained DoS condition that could force the affected device to stop scanning and forwarding email messages.

Affected

Our own answer: ranges merged, affected separated from platform-only, with confidence and review flags.

v < 11.0.2-044_md11.1.0 ≤ v < 11.1.2-023_md
Affected range stops below 11.0.2-044_md, so it looks safe — our inference, not a vendor statement
Affected range stops below 11.1.2-023_md, so it looks safe — our inference, not a vendor statement
cisco-email-security-appliance (environment)

Remediation

No guide yet

No remediation guidance has been written for this CVE yet. What the record does show:

SSVC — Action Prioritization

SSVCNo known exploitAutomatablePartial impact

SSVC signals action urgency (what to patch first), separate from CVSS which measures severity.

CVSS

Attack Vector
NETWORK
Complexity
LOW
Privileges
NONE
User Interaction
NONE
Scope
CHANGED
Confidentiality
NONE
Integrity
NONE
Availability
HIGH
Vector?

Quick Info

StatusMODIFIED
CWE
CWE-20CWE-770

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