Medium [CVE-2026-20248] Cisco Secure Firewall Adaptive Security Appliance and Secure Firewall Threat Defense Software TCP DNS Denial of Service Vulnerability

A vulnerability in the DNS over TCP implementation of Cisco Secure Firewall Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software and Cisco Secure Firewall Threat Defense (FTD) Software could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to cause the TCP DNS response handler to unexpectedly restart, causing the device to reload.

This vulnerability is due to a logic error when parsing a DNS query and tracking the size of the incoming buffers. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by formatting a crafted reply to a DNS query sent from the targeted device.

A successful exploit could allow the attacker to cause the device to reload, causing a denial of service (DoS) condition.

Note: The attacker must be able to respond to DNS queries from the device, either by controlling the DNS service or through a machine-in-the-middle attack.

Cisco has released software updates that address this vulnerability. There are no workarounds that address this vulnerability.

This advisory is part of a group of advisories. For a complete list of the advisories and links to them, see Cisco Advance Notification for Publication of September 16, 2026, Security Advisories.

Affected products named by the advisory: Firepower 2100 Series; Firepower 1000 Series; ASA 5500-X Series Firewalls; 3000 Series Industrial Security Appliances (ISA); and 3 more.