Pierluigi Paganini March 08, 2018

The set of security updates recently released by Cisco also includes two advisories for critical vulnerabilities, a hardcoded password, and a Java deserialization flaw.

The lasters set of security updates released by Cisco also includes two advisories for critical vulnerabilities.

The first issue is a hardcoded password, tracked as CVE-2018-0141, that affects Cisco’s Prime Collaboration Provisioning (PCP) and that can be exploited by local attackers to gain full control over a vulnerable equipment.

The Cisco’s Prime Collaboration Provisioning application allows admins to remotely install and maintain Cisco voice and video solutions.

A local attacker just has to connect to the affected system via Secure Shell (SSH) using the hardcoded password, the

“A vulnerability in Cisco Prime Collaboration Provisioning (PCP) Software could allow an unauthenticated, local attacker to log in to the underlying Linux operating system.” reads the security advisory published by CISCO.

“The vulnerability is due to a hard-coded account password on the system. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by connecting to the affected system via Secure Shell (SSH) using the hard-coded credentials. “

The hardcoded password can grant to a local attacker the access to a low-privileged user account, but chaining the vulnerability with other issues there is the risk that the attacker would elevate privileges to root.

The vulnerability has received a Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) Base score of 5.9, a score normally assigned to medium-severity flaws.

“Although this vulnerability has a Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) Base score of 5.9, which is normally assigned a Security Impact Rating (SIR) of Medium, there are extenuating circumstances that allow an attacker to elevate privileges to root. For these reasons, the SIR has been set to Critical.” continues Cisco.

Currently, there are no workarounds to address the vulnerability in PCP software, but Cisco has already released patches.

The second critical vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2018-0147, is a Java deserialization flaw 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.

“A vulnerability in Java deserialization used by Cisco Secure Access Control System (ACS) could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to execute arbitrary commands on an affected device.” reads the security advisory.

“The vulnerability is due to insecure deserialization of user-supplied content by the affected software. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a crafted serialized Java object. An exploit could allow the attacker to execute arbitrary commands on the device with root privileges.”

Cisco has released software updates to fix the flaw.

Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – Cisco, hacking)

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