Cisco fixes critical issue in Cisco Firepower Management Center

Cisco addressed a critical issue in the Cisco Firepower Management Center (FMC) that could allow a remote attacker to bypass authentication and execute arbitrary actions.

Cisco fixed a critical vulnerability in the Cisco Firepower Management Center that could allow a remote attacker to gain administrative access to the web-based management interface of the vulnerable devices and execute arbitrary actions. The vulnerability tracked as CVE-2019-16028 received a CVSS score of 9.8.

“A vulnerability in the web-based management interface of Cisco Firepower Management Center (FMC) could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to bypass authentication and execute arbitrary actions with administrative privileges on an affected device.” reads the security advisory published by Cisco.

“The vulnerability is due to improper handling of Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) authentication responses from an external authentication server. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending crafted HTTP requests to an affected device. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to gain administrative access to the web-based management interface of the affected device.”

The issue, Cisco stems from the improper handling of Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) authentication responses from an external server. The issue could be triggered by sending crafted HTTP requests to a vulnerable device and gain administrative access to the web-based management interface.

Cisco warns that only Cisco Firepower Management Center configured to authenticate users of the web-based management interface through an external LDAP server are affected.

“To determine whether external authentication using an LDAP server is configured on the device, administrators can navigate to System > Users > External Authentication and look for an External Authentication Object that uses LDAP as the authentication method. The External Authentication Object must be enabled for the FMC to be affected.” continues the advisory.

Cisco released FMC Software versions 6.4.0.7 and 6.5.0.2 to address the flaw, it also announced the release of patches for versions 6.2.3 (6.2.3.16) and 6.3.0 (6.3.0.6) in February and May 2020, respectively.

The company confirmed that there are no workarounds that address this vulnerability, it also confirmed that this issue does not affect Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software or Cisco Firepower Threat Defense (FTD) Software.

Cisco is not aware of any attack in the wild exploiting the flaw.

[adrotate banner=”9″]

[adrotate banner=”12″]

Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – Iran, hacking)

[adrotate banner=”5″]

[adrotate banner=”13″]

Pierluigi Paganini

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”.