Pierluigi Paganini April 06, 2017

The Mobility Express Software shipped with Cisco Aironet 1830 Series and 1850 Series access points has a hard-coded admin-level SSH password.

Yesterday I wrote about SCADA systems that are currently shipped with an unchangeable hard-coded password, and today I’m here to discuss you a similar problem.

The Mobility Express Software developed by the IT giant CISCO that is shipped with Aironet 1830 Series and 1850 Series access points has a hard-coded admin-level SSH password.

The presence of default credentials could be exploited by attackers to remotely exploit a “layer 3 connectivity to an affected device”.

“A vulnerability in Cisco Aironet 1830 Series and Cisco Aironet 1850 Series Access Points running Cisco Mobility Express Software could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to take complete control of an affected device.” reads the security advisory. “The vulnerability is due to the existence of default credentials for an affected device that is running Cisco Mobility Express Software, regardless of whether the device is configured as a master, subordinate, or standalone access point. An attacker who has layer 3 connectivity to an affected device could use Secure Shell (SSH) to log in to the device with elevated privileges. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to take complete control of the device”

To discover which release of Cisco Mobility Express Software is running on your device you can use the Cisco Mobility Express wireless controller web interface or the CLI.
The release number is available in the section under the web interface under Management > Software Update.

The security advisory published by the company is part of a wider set that addresses security issued for the Aironet 1830/1850 series.

The problem affects every access point running the 8.2.x release of Cisco Mobility Express Software prior to Release 8.2.111.0., regardless of whether the device is configured as a master, subordinate, or standalone access point.

CISCO has released free software updates that fixed the flaw described in the advisory. It is important to remind that customers may only install and receive support for software versions for which they have purchased a license.

Other security issues related the Aironet technology are:

Cisco has already issued security fixes to patch the above problems.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – Cisco Aironet, Cisco Mobility Express)