Cisco has launched a brand new safety advisory warning of a high-severity flaw affecting IP Cellphone 7800 and 8800 Collection firmware that could possibly be probably exploited by a distant attacker to trigger distant code execution or a denial-of-service (DoS) situation.
The networking tools main mentioned it is engaged on a patch to deal with the vulnerability, which is tracked as CVE-2022-20968 (CVSS rating: 8.1) and stems from a case of inadequate enter validation of acquired Cisco Discovery Protocol (CDP) packets.
CDP is a proprietary network-independent protocol that’s used for amassing data associated to close by, straight related gadgets similar to {hardware}, software program, and system title, amongst others. It is enabled by default.
“An attacker may exploit this vulnerability by sending crafted Cisco Discovery Protocol site visitors to an affected system,” the corporate mentioned in an alert printed on December 8, 2022.
“A profitable exploit may enable the attacker to trigger a stack overflow, leading to attainable distant code execution or a denial of service (DoS) situation on an affected system.”
Cisco IP telephones operating firmware model 14.2 and earlier are impacted. A patch is scheduled for launch in January 2023, with the corporate stating that there are not any updates or workarounds to remediate the problem.
Nevertheless, on deployments that assist each CDP and Hyperlink Layer Discovery Protocol (LLDP) for neighbor discovery, customers can choose to disable CDP in order that the affected gadgets change to LLDP for promoting their identification and capabilities to straight related friends in a neighborhood space community (LAN).
“This isn’t a trivial change and would require diligence on behalf of the enterprise to judge any potential impression to gadgets in addition to the most effective method to deploy this transformation of their enterprise,” the corporate mentioned.
It additional warned that it is conscious of the supply of a proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit and that the shortcoming has been publicly disclosed. There is not any proof that the vulnerability has been actively abused within the wild up to now.
Qian Chen from the Codesafe Workforce of Legendsec at Qi’anxin Group has been credited with discovering and reporting the vulnerability.
