CVE-2019-1983

Cisco Email Security Appliance and Cisco Content Security Management Appliance Denial of Service Vulnerability

MEDIUM
5.3
CVSS Score
Published: September 23, 2020 at 12:25 AM UTC
Updated: June 17, 2026 at 02:29 AM UTC
3 products affected across 1 vendorEmail Security ApplianceAsyncosContent Security Management Appliance

Using Cisco Email Security Appliance (ESA) by Cisco?

Get instant alerts when new vulnerabilities affect Cisco Email Security Appliance (ESA) - before attackers find them.

Real-time alertsTrack your software stackFree plan available
Severity
MEDIUM5.3
Exploit prediction
EPSS 2%
SSVC
No known exploit

Description

A vulnerability in the email message filtering feature of Cisco AsyncOS Software for Cisco Email Security Appliance (ESA) and Cisco Content Security Management Appliance (SMA) could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to cause repeated crashes in some internal processes that are running on the affected devices, resulting in a denial of service (DoS) condition. The vulnerability is due to insufficient input validation of email attachments. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending an email message with a crafted attachment through an affected device. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to cause specific processes to crash repeatedly, resulting in the complete unavailability of both the Cisco Advanced Malware Protection (AMP) and message tracking features and in severe performance degradation while processing email. After the affected processes restart, the software resumes filtering for the same attachment, causing the affected processes to crash and restart again. A successful exploit could also allow the attacker to cause a repeated DoS condition. Manual intervention may be required to recover from this situation.

Affected

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

v < 11.0.1-161v < 11.0.3-25112.0 ≤ v ≤ 12.5.0-63312.0 ≤ v < 12.5.0-059
Affected range stops below 11.0.1-161, so it looks safe — our inference, not a vendor statement
Affected range stops below 11.0.3-251, so it looks safe — our inference, not a vendor statement
Affected range stops below 12.5.0-059, so it looks safe — our inference, not a vendor statement

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
UNCHANGED
Confidentiality
NONE
Integrity
NONE
Availability
LOW
Vector?

Quick Info

StatusMODIFIED
CWE
CWE-20

Get alerted

Stop reading CVE feeds looking for your own stack

Track the products you run and VulnTracker tells you when a new CVE affects them — with what is known about fixing it, and nothing about the rest.

Free plan, no card