Does Cisco Firewall bugs leave networks vulnerable to attacks?

Security researchers have uncovered a swathe of serious vulnerabilities in a firewall system developed by CUJO which has been designed to prevent cyber attackers from infiltrating home networks.

CUJO's Smart Firewall is a device which proclaims protection from malware, viruses, and hacking attempts by way of an intelligent home firewall. However, according to Cisco Talos, the device contained flaws which were severe enough to enable cyber attackers to bypass safe browsing functions and fully hijack the product at will.

Cisco patched a dozen high-severity bugs in its Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) and Firepower 1000 Series firewall appliances and Cisco Firepower Threat Defense (FTD) software used to protect corporate networks and data centers.

While Cisco says it isn’t aware of any malicious use of any of the 12 vulnerabilities, the bugs are notable because of the sheer number of companies that use Cisco firewalls. The Cisco ASA alone has more than 1 million deployments globally, according to Positive Technologies, whose threat researchers reported two of the vulnerabilities to Cisco.

The two security flaws that Positive Technologies found and helped remediate are in Cisco ASA firewalls. The threat researchers say exploitations of these vulnerabilities may prevent virtual private network (VPN) connections and allow attackers to penetrate corporate networks. They found that more than 220,000 internet-accessible devices are vulnerable to attacks within seconds.