CVE Vulnerabilities

CVE-2007-4786

Cleartext Transmission of Sensitive Information

Published: Sep 10, 2007 | Modified: Jan 25, 2024
CVSS 3.x
5.3
MEDIUM
Source:
NVD
CVSS:3.1/AV:A/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
CVSS 2.x
4.3 MEDIUM
AV:A/AC:H/Au:S/C:C/I:N/A:N
RedHat/V2
RedHat/V3
Ubuntu

Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) running PIX 7.0 before 7.0.7.1, 7.1 before 7.1.2.61, 7.2 before 7.2.2.34, and 8.0 before 8.0.2.11, when AAA is enabled, composes %ASA-5-111008 messages from the test aaa command with cleartext passwords and sends them over the network to a remote syslog server or places them in a local logging buffer, which allows context-dependent attackers to obtain sensitive information.

Weakness

The product transmits sensitive or security-critical data in cleartext in a communication channel that can be sniffed by unauthorized actors.

Affected Software

Name Vendor Start Version End Version
Adaptive_security_appliance_software Cisco 7.0 *
Adaptive_security_appliance_software Cisco 7.1 *
Adaptive_security_appliance_software Cisco 7.2 *
Adaptive_security_appliance_software Cisco 8.0 *

Extended Description

Many communication channels can be “sniffed” (monitored) by adversaries during data transmission. For example, in networking, packets can traverse many intermediary nodes from the source to the destination, whether across the internet, an internal network, the cloud, etc. Some actors might have privileged access to a network interface or any link along the channel, such as a router, but they might not be authorized to collect the underlying data. As a result, network traffic could be sniffed by adversaries, spilling security-critical data. Applicable communication channels are not limited to software products. Applicable channels include hardware-specific technologies such as internal hardware networks and external debug channels, supporting remote JTAG debugging. When mitigations are not applied to combat adversaries within the product’s threat model, this weakness significantly lowers the difficulty of exploitation by such adversaries. When full communications are recorded or logged, such as with a packet dump, an adversary could attempt to obtain the dump long after the transmission has occurred and try to “sniff” the cleartext from the recorded communications in the dump itself.

Potential Mitigations

References