CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2016-9225 — Cisco Asa Cx Context-Aware Security Software security vulnerability

High CVSS 8.6

A vulnerability in the data plane IP fragment handler of the Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) CX Context-Aware Security module could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to cause the CX module to be unable to process further traffic, resulting in a denial of service (DoS) condition. The vulnerability is due to improper handling of IP fragments. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending crafted fragmented IP traffic across the CX module. An exploit could allow the attacker to exhaust free packet buffers in shared memory (SHM), causing the CX module to be unable to process further traffic, resulting in a DoS condition. This vulnerability affects all versions of the ASA CX Context-Aware Security module. Cisco has not released and will not release software updates that address this vulnerability. There are no workarounds that address this vulnerability. Cisco Bug IDs: CSCva62946.

Severity
High
CVSS
8.6 (3.0)
Published
2017-02-01
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
operating-system
Weaknesses
CWE-399

Affected products

  • cisco / asa_cx_context-aware_security_software / 9.0.1
  • cisco / asa_cx_context-aware_security_software / 9.0.1-40
  • cisco / asa_cx_context-aware_security_software / 9.0.2
  • cisco / asa_cx_context-aware_security_software / 9.0.2-68
  • cisco / asa_cx_context-aware_security_software / 9.0_base
  • cisco / asa_cx_context-aware_security_software / 9.1.2-29

Showing 6 representative product identities from 24 source matches. Confirm exact affected versions with the linked vendor and NVD evidence.

Matched remediation archetype

Resource exhaustion and denial of service

This catalog composition supplies bounded fallback guidance. Explicitly reviewed curated workflows load with the complete record below.

Check exposure

  • Identify attacker-influenced work factors including input size, nesting, compression, fan-out, regex cost, allocation, recursion, retries, and connection lifetime.
  • Map per-request and shared CPU, memory, disk, descriptor, thread, queue, and downstream-service limits.
  • Determine whether authentication, tenancy, quotas, and rate controls apply before expensive processing begins.

Remediate safely

  • Bound input size, nesting, expansion, work, concurrency, queue depth, retries, and execution time before resource-intensive processing.
  • Release resources on every success, error, cancellation, and timeout path and use backpressure instead of unbounded buffering.
  • Update affected components and add small deterministic tests that assert resource ceilings rather than exhausting a host.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

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