- 8.6HighCVSS base score
- 2.5%Exploitation in 30 daysEPSS · top 15% of all CVEs
- NoKnown exploitednot in CISA's KEV catalog
- NonePublic exploitsnone known yet
Description
A vulnerability in the email message filtering feature of Cisco AsyncOS Software for Cisco Email Security Appliances (ESA) could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to cause the CPU utilization to increase to 100 percent, causing a denial of service (DoS) condition on an affected device. The vulnerability is due to improper filtering of email messages that contain references to whitelisted URLs. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a malicious email message that contains a large number of whitelisted URLs. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to cause a sustained DoS condition that could force the affected device to stop scanning and forwarding email messages.
Timeline
ID reserved
By cisco
- 5 months later
· 5 months later
Published
- 6 years later
· 6 years later
Record updated
Changes after publication (a new score, a public exploit, EPSS crossing 1, 10 or 50 %, leaving KEV) are kept since November 2026; earlier ones are not known.
Scores
| Scored by | CVSS | Score | Vector |
|---|---|---|---|
| ciscoCNA (assigner) | 3.0 | High8.6 | CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:N/A:H |
| NVDNVD · Modified | 3.1 | High8.6 | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:N/A:H |
- EPSS (exploitation in 30 days)
- 2.5% · top 15% of all CVEs (10 Nov 2026)
- CISA SSVC
- Exploitation: none · Automatable: yes · Technical impact: partial
The list uses the assigner's score when there is one, then CISA's, then NVD's: High 8.6.
Affected products
Cisco · Cisco Email Security Appliance (ESA)
- affected n/a
What to do
Exploitation: The Cisco Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) is not aware of any public announcements or malicious use of the vulnerability that is described in this advisory.
References
2
- 106507 (opens in a new tab)vdb-entryx_refsource_BIDx_transferred
- 20190109 Cisco Email Security Appliance URL Filtering Denial of Service Vulnerability (opens in a new tab)vendor-advisoryx_refsource_CISCOx_transferred
Sources
The same CVE in the primary databases and aggregators, to check against.
- CVE.org record (opens in a new tab)
- CVE List JSON (GitHub) (opens in a new tab)
- NVD (opens in a new tab)
- FIRST EPSS (opens in a new tab)
- EUVD EUVD-2018-7338 (opens in a new tab)
- OSV.dev (opens in a new tab)
- GitHub Advisories (opens in a new tab)
- CIRCL Vulnerability-Lookup (opens in a new tab)
Badge for a README or a ticket
[](https://cveledger.app/cve/CVE-2018-15460)Record last updated .