Old vulnerabilities in Cisco products actively exploited in the wild
IT giant Cisco is warning of threat actors exploiting many old vulnerabilities in attacks in the wild.
Cisco has updated multiple security advisories to warn of the active exploitation of several old vulnerabilities impacting its products.
The bugs, some of which are rated as ‘critical’ severity, impact Cisco IOS, NX-OS, and HyperFlex software.
Below are the critical vulnerabilities being exploited in attacks in the wild:
CVE-2017-12240 (CVSS score of 9.8) – The vulnerability affects the DHCP relay subsystem in IOS and IOS XE software. The vulnerability could be exploited by a remote and unauthenticated attacker that can execute arbitrary code and gain full control of the targeted system. The flaw could be also exploited to cause a denial-of-service (DoS) condition by triggering a buffer overflow via specially crafted DHCPv4 packets.
CVE-2018-0125 (CVSS score of 9.8) – A vulnerability in the web interface of the Cisco RV132W ADSL2+ Wireless-N VPN and RV134W VDSL2 Wireless-AC VPN Routers could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to execute arbitrary code and gain full control of an affected system, including issuing commands with root privileges.
CVE-2018-0147 (CVSS score of 9.8) – The vulnerability is a Java deserialization issue that affects Cisco Access Control System (ACS) that can be exploited by an unauthenticated, remote attacker to execute arbitrary commands with root privileges on an affected device.
CVE-2018-0171 (CVSS score of 9.8) – The vulnerability affects the Smart Install feature of Cisco IOS Software and Cisco IOS XE Software, it could be exploited by an unauthenticated, remote attacker to cause a reload of a vulnerable device or to execute arbitrary code on an affected device.
CVE-2021-1497 (CVSS score of 9.8) – The vulnerability is a Command Injection issue that resides in the web-based management interface of Cisco HyperFlex HX.
Organizations are recommended to review the Cisco’s advisories and apply security patches released by the company.
Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.
