A vulnerability in the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) subsystem of Cisco IOS XE 3.16 could allow an authenticated, remote attacker to cause a denial of service (DoS) condition. The vulnerability is due to a race condition that could occur when the affected software processes an SNMP read request that contains certain criteria for a specific object ID (OID) and an active crypto session is disconnected on an affected device. An attacker who can authenticate to an affected device could trigger this vulnerability by issuing an SNMP request for a specific OID on the device. A successful exploit will cause the device to restart due to an attempt to access an invalid memory region. The attacker does not control how or when crypto sessions are disconnected on the device. Cisco Bug IDs: CSCvb94392.
Weakness
The product reads data past the end, or before the beginning, of the intended buffer.
Affected Software
| Name |
Vendor |
Start Version |
End Version |
| Ios_xe |
Cisco |
3.16.0cs (including) |
3.16.0cs (including) |
| Ios_xe |
Cisco |
3.16.0s (including) |
3.16.0s (including) |
| Ios_xe |
Cisco |
3.16.1as (including) |
3.16.1as (including) |
| Ios_xe |
Cisco |
3.16.1s (including) |
3.16.1s (including) |
| Ios_xe |
Cisco |
3.16.2s (including) |
3.16.2s (including) |
Potential Mitigations
- Assume all input is malicious. Use an “accept known good” input validation strategy, i.e., use a list of acceptable inputs that strictly conform to specifications. Reject any input that does not strictly conform to specifications, or transform it into something that does.
- When performing input validation, consider all potentially relevant properties, including length, type of input, the full range of acceptable values, missing or extra inputs, syntax, consistency across related fields, and conformance to business rules. As an example of business rule logic, “boat” may be syntactically valid because it only contains alphanumeric characters, but it is not valid if the input is only expected to contain colors such as “red” or “blue.”
- Do not rely exclusively on looking for malicious or malformed inputs. This is likely to miss at least one undesirable input, especially if the code’s environment changes. This can give attackers enough room to bypass the intended validation. However, denylists can be useful for detecting potential attacks or determining which inputs are so malformed that they should be rejected outright.
- To reduce the likelihood of introducing an out-of-bounds read, ensure that you validate and ensure correct calculations for any length argument, buffer size calculation, or offset. Be especially careful of relying on a sentinel (i.e. special character such as NUL) in untrusted inputs.
References