Cisco Addresses Zero-Day Firewall Flaw Exposed In Equation Group Hack

Cisco Systems yesterday released a security alert on flaws in its ASA and PIX firewalls that were publicly exposed via the recent online leak of files from the Equation Group (aka the National Security Agency).

The so-called ShadowBrokers group -- thought by many experts to be a Russian-backed entity -- is holding an online auction of Equation Group exploits. 

The first is a previously unknown security flaw. Cisco in its security advisory said the ASA SNMP Remote Code Execution vulnerability is a “buffer overflow in the affected code area” that an intruder could use to execute arbitrary code remotely or to cause reload of the system.

The second flaw that is one Cisco first announced in 2011 -- a ASA CLI Remote Code Execution vulnerability -- could allow a local attacker to call up invalid commands in an affected device and launch a denial-of-service attack or execute arbitrary code.

For more information, see Cisco's advisory here.