Pierluigi Paganini November 16, 2017

Cisco issued a security advisory warning of a vulnerability in Cisco Voice Operating System software platform that affects at least 12 products.

The tech giant Cisco issued a security advisory warning of a vulnerability in Cisco Voice Operating System software platform that could be triggered by an unauthenticated, remote hacker to gain unauthorized and elevated access to vulnerable devices.

The flaw in Cisco Voice Operating System software platform, tracked as CVE-2017-12337, was rated as Critical

“A vulnerability in the upgrade mechanism of Cisco collaboration products based on the Cisco Voice Operating System software platform could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to gain unauthorized, elevated access to an affected device.” reads the Cisco Security Bulletin.

“The vulnerability occurs when a refresh upgrade or Prime Collaboration Deployment (PCD) migration is performed on an affected device. When a refresh upgrade or PCD migration is completed successfully, an engineering flag remains enabled and could allow root access to the device with a known password.”

The US-CERT issued an alert related to the flaw encouraging users and administrators to review apply the necessary update.

A remote attacker that manages to access the vulnerable devices over SSH File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) could gain root access. 12 products are affected by the vulnerability, including Cisco Prime License Manager, Cisco SocialMiner, Cisco Emergency Responder and Cisco MediaSense.

“An attacker who can access an affected device over SFTP while it is in a vulnerable state could gain root access to the device. This access could allow the attacker to compromise the affected system completely.” continues the security bulletin.

The vulnerability could be fixed by upgrading the device using the standard upgrade method to an Engineering Special Release, service update, or a new major release of the affected product.

“If the vulnerable device is subsequently upgraded using the standard upgrade method to an Engineering Special Release, service update, or a new major release of the affected product, this vulnerability is remediated by that action,” said Cisco.

CISCO highlighted that Engineering Special Releases that are installed as COP files do not fix this vulnerability.

The software update fixes the bug.

Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – Cisco Voice Operating System software platform, hacking)

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