Multiple vulnerabilities in the Media Gateway Control Protocol (MGCP) inspection feature of Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software and Firepower Threat Defense (FTD) Software could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to cause a denial of service (DoS) condition on an affected device. The vulnerabilities are due to inefficient memory management. An attacker could exploit these vulnerabilities by sending crafted MGCP packets through an affected device. An exploit could allow the attacker to cause memory exhaustion resulting in a restart of an affected device, causing a DoS condition for traffic traversing the device.
The product does not properly control the allocation and maintenance of a limited resource.
| Name | Vendor | Start Version | End Version |
|---|---|---|---|
| Firepower_threat_defense | Cisco | 6.2.3 (including) | 6.2.3.16 (excluding) |
| Firepower_threat_defense | Cisco | 6.3.0 (including) | 6.3.0.6 (excluding) |
| Firepower_threat_defense | Cisco | 6.4.0 (including) | 6.4.0.4 (excluding) |
Mitigation of resource exhaustion attacks requires that the target system either:
The first of these solutions is an issue in itself though, since it may allow attackers to prevent the use of the system by a particular valid user. If the attacker impersonates the valid user, they may be able to prevent the user from accessing the server in question.
The second solution is simply difficult to effectively institute – and even when properly done, it does not provide a full solution. It simply makes the attack require more resources on the part of the attacker.