Cisco Issues 31 Mid-April Security Alerts
Among them, two are critical and six are of high importance.
April 18, 2019
![](https://eu-images.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt6d90778a997de1cd/bltc94608acf452fd67/655cf371ab171e040a838b2a/329050_DR23_Graphics_Website_V5_Default_Image_v1.png?width=1280&auto=webp&quality=95&format=jpg&disable=upscale)
A busy month for Cisco router owners got busier yesterday when the networking giant introduced 31 new advisories and alerts. These announcements came on top of 11 high- and medium-impact vulnerabilities announced earlier in the month.
Of the 31 alerts, 23 are of medium impact, six are of high impact, and two are of critical impact to the organization and its security team.
Most of the medium-impact alerts are for cross-site scripting vulnerabilities, denial-of-service vulnerabilities, or vulnerabilities affecting unauthorized users and access. These were found on devices ranging from LAN controllers to wireless network access points to Cisco's new Umbrella security framework.
The two critical alerts are for two very different vulnerabilities. In one, a vulnerability in Cisco IOS and IOS XE could allow an attacker to reload the system on a device (potentially replacing the legitimate system with one containing malicious code), or remotely execute code at a privilege level above the level of the user being spoofed to gain access.
This vulnerability is found in the Cisco Cluster Management Protocol (CMP) and was discovered when the documents in the infamous Vault 7 disclosure were analyzed. That's bad news because those documents have been available to hackers around the world for more than two years. And the news gets worse: Researchers at Cisco Talos have published a blog post showing this vulnerability has been exploited in the wild as part of a DNS hijacking campaign dubbed "Sea Turtle."
Cisco already has released a software patch for this critical vulnerability, which has no operational workaround for successful remediation.
The second critical vulnerability could allow a remote attacker to gain access to applications running on a sysadmin virtual machine (VM) that is operating on Cisco ASR 9000 series Aggregation Services Routers. This vulnerability, Cisco says, was found during internal testing and has not yet been used in the wild. The source of the vulnerability – insufficient isolation of the management interface from internal applications – has been fixed in a pair of Cisco IOS XR software releases and does not, therefore, warrant a separate update, Cisco says.
Between the medium and critical vulnerabilities are six high-importance vulnerabilities that affect systems including telepresence video servers, wireless LAN controllers (three separate vulnerabilities), Aironet wireless access points, and the SNMP service.
Cisco ranks the severity of vulnerabilities using the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) Version 3. Vulnerabilities with a CVSS score of 9.0 to 10.0 are critical, those in the range of 7.0 to 8.9 are high, and a score of 4.0 to 6.9 warrants a medium label. Anything ranking below medium is given an informational alert only.
Related Content:
Join Dark Reading LIVE for two cybersecurity summits at Interop 2019. Learn from the industry's most knowledgeable IT security experts. Check out the Interop agenda here.
About the Author
You May Also Like
Catch the Threat Before it Catches you: Proactive Ransomware Defense
September 5, 2024How to Evaluate Hybrid-Cloud Network Policies and Enhance Security
September 18, 2024DORA and PCI DSS 4.0: Scale Your Mainframe Security Strategy Among Evolving Regulations
September 26, 2024Harnessing the Power of Automation to Boost Enterprise Cybersecurity
October 3, 2024
[Virtual Event] The Essential Guide to Cloud Management
October 17, 2024Black Hat Europe - December 9-12 - Learn More
December 10, 2024SecTor - Canada's IT Security Conference Oct 22-24 - Learn More
October 22, 2024