CVE-2026-97714 in Secure Access
Summary
by MITRE • 10/07/2026
CVE-2026-97714 is a is a vulnerability in the authentication sub-system of Secure Access servers prior to version 14.60. Attackers can send a malformed response during authentication and cause a persistent denial of service.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 10/07/2026
The identified vulnerability, designated as CVE-2026-97714, resides within the authentication sub-system of Secure Access servers operating on versions prior to 14.60. This component is critical for verifying user identities and granting access to protected resources, making its stability paramount for overall system security. The flaw specifically involves an improper handling mechanism when processing incoming authentication responses from clients or intermediate network devices. When the server receives a response that deviates from expected formatting standards or contains malformed data structures, it fails to validate the input correctly before attempting to process it further within the authentication logic flow.
From a technical perspective, this defect represents a classic case of insufficient validation against untrusted input during critical security operations. The vulnerability allows an attacker to craft and transmit a specifically designed malformed response that exploits weaknesses in how the server parses or interprets these packets. Instead of gracefully rejecting the invalid data with an appropriate error code, the authentication subsystem encounters an unrecoverable state. This leads to a crash or hang within the service handling the connection, effectively rendering the specific instance or potentially the entire cluster unable to process new authentication requests until manual intervention occurs.
The operational impact of this vulnerability is severe due to its potential for causing persistent denial of service conditions. Unlike transient errors that might resolve themselves after a timeout, this flaw can leave the affected server in a degraded state requiring administrative restarts. For organizations relying on these Secure Access servers as gateways or proxies for sensitive applications, such outages disrupt business continuity and create significant availability gaps. Attackers do not necessarily need high-level privileges to exploit this; they only require network connectivity to the authentication endpoint, which is often exposed to broader networks depending on deployment configurations.
This vulnerability aligns with CWE-20 Improper Input Validation, as the root cause lies in the failure to adequately sanitize or verify data received from external sources before processing it within a privileged context. Furthermore, its classification under MITRE ATT&CK technique T1499 Endpoint Denial of Service highlights how adversaries can leverage such flaws to degrade system availability rather than compromising confidentiality or integrity directly. The persistent nature of the denial of service exacerbates the risk by increasing mean time to recovery and potentially masking other malicious activities occurring during the outage period.
Mitigation strategies must prioritize immediate patching to version 14.60 or later, where these validation checks have been corrected. In environments where upgrading is not immediately feasible, network-level controls should be implemented to restrict access to authentication endpoints strictly to trusted IP ranges and enforce strict rate limiting to mitigate the volume of malformed requests that can trigger the flaw. Additionally, deploying intrusion prevention systems with signatures capable of detecting anomalous packet structures during authentication handshakes can provide a layer of defense against exploitation attempts while permanent fixes are applied.