CVE-2022-20952
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 · uneditedA vulnerability in the scanning engines of Cisco AsyncOS Software for Cisco Secure Web Appliance, formerly known as Cisco Web Security Appliance (WSA), could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to bypass a configured rule, thereby allowing traffic onto a network that should have been blocked. This vulnerability exists because malformed, encoded traffic is not properly detected. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by connecting through an affected device to a malicious server and receiving malformed HTTP responses. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to bypass an explicit block rule and receive traffic that should have been rejected by the device.
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 · low confidenceAffected 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>= 11.8, < 14.0.4= 14.5.0CVSS 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
- Low
- Privileges
- None
- User interaction
- None
- Scope
- Unchanged
- Confidentiality
- None
- Integrity
- Low
- Availability
- None
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:N
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.
dbcve · scoped14.0.4
AsyncOS 14.0.5 or later (avoiding 14.5.0)
- 1. Identify the current AsyncOS version running on the Cisco Secure Web Appliance using the CLI command 'version' or through the web interface under System Administration > System Upgrade.
- 2. Confirm the current version is either >= 11.8 and < 14.0.4, or exactly 14.5.0.
- 3. Download the appropriate AsyncOS upgrade image from Cisco (requires valid service contract) - select version 14.0.5 or later, ensuring to avoid version 14.5.0.
- 4. Back up the current appliance configuration via the web interface (System Administration > Configuration File) or CLI command 'configuration'.
Generated from the published advisory — verify against the referenced sources before acting.
Scan for this in your stack
Free · runs locallyCheck whether your project pulls in CVE-2022-20952 — 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-2022-20952 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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- Verified mitigations, workarounds, and config changes
- Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
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