Adaptive Security Appliance SoftwareOperating system · Cisco
CVE-2013-3458
Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.
NVD · uneditedCisco Adaptive Security Appliances (ASA) devices, when SMP is used, do not properly process X.509 certificates, which allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (device crash) via a large volume of (1) SSL or (2) TLS traffic, aka Bug ID CSCuh19462.
Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.
dbcve analysis · high confidenceCisco ASA devices with SMP enabled have a flaw in X.509 certificate processing within SSL/TLS handling. Sending a large volume of specially crafted SSL or TLS traffic with certificates triggers a parsing error that causes the device to crash, resulting in denial of service.
Verify against the referenced sources before acting — the references below are authoritative for this CVE, this summary is not.
Affected products & versions What the vendor confirmedThe version ranges the vendor confirmed as vulnerable. If your version sits inside a range here, treat yourself as exposed until you have upgraded.
NVD · CPE data
Adaptive Security Appliance SoftwareOperating system
all versionsCVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.
From the vector- Attack vector
- Network
- Complexity
- M
- Authentication
- None
- Confidentiality
- None
- Integrity
- None
- Availability
- Complete
AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:C
Am I affected? How to checkSteps we derive from the advisory and the affected-version data, so you can decide whether this CVE reaches your setup. They are a guide, not a scan — your own configuration is the authority.
dbcve checksWork through these to decide whether this CVE applies to you.
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Confirm Cisco ASA deviceRun 'show version' or 'show inventory' and verify the device model is Cisco Adaptive Security ApplianceAffected if Device is not a Cisco ASA model
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Check if SMP is enabledRun 'show smp' or 'show running-config | include smp' to determine if Security Management Port is enabledAffected if SMP is disabled or not configured - the flaw requires SMP to be enabled
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Verify SSL/TLS configuration existsRun 'show run ssl' or 'show running-config | include ssl' to check if SSL/TLS is configuredAffected if SSL/TLS is not configured - the device is not exposed to the vulnerable code path
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Check for certificate configurationRun 'show run crypto ca' or 'show running-config | include certificate' to see if X.509 certificates are configured for SSL/TLSAffected if No certificates are configured - the parsing vulnerability is not triggered
The device is affected if it is a Cisco ASA with SMP enabled and actively handling SSL/TLS connections with X.509 certificates, as all software versions contain the flaw.
Generated from the published advisory. Verify against your own configuration.
Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.
From vendor dataApply the Cisco firmware update for Bug ID CSCuh19462. If no patch is available, consider rate-limiting SSL/TLS connections or temporarily disabling SMP as a compensating control until patching is possible.
Fix this in Adaptive Security Appliance Software
Scoped from the published advisory
- Consultation4.0 h
- Implementation4.0 h
- Testing4.0 h
- Review / QA2.0 h
An estimate, not a bill — we confirm scope with you before any work starts. Need it this week? Rush from $3,968.
Scan for this in your stack
Free · runs locallyCheck whether your project pulls in CVE-2013-3458 — or any other known-vulnerable package — straight from your lock files. Free and open source; it runs locally and uploads nothing.
References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.
Primary sourcesPractitioner notes
ContributedPeer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2013-3458 in production — separate from our analysis above.
The advisory tells you what broke. It rarely tells you what actually worked. If you’ve dealt with this one, that detail is what the next engineer is searching for.
- The version that genuinely resolved it — not the one the vendor claimed
- A config change or rule that shut the vector down
- A gotcha in the upgrade path that cost you an afternoon
No notes yet
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A place for practitioners to share what actually worked: a mitigation you’ve tested, a configuration change, a version- or environment-specific caveat, or a link to a verified patch. The most useful notes rise to the top as peers upvote them, so the signal stays high.
- Verified mitigations, workarounds, and config changes
- Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
- No weaponised exploit code, or anything meant to cause harm
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