A vulnerability in the Control and Provisioning of Wireless Access Points (CAPWAP) protocol processing of Cisco IOS XE Software for Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to cause a denial of service (DoS) condition of an affected device. The vulnerability is due to insufficient input validation during CAPWAP packet processing. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a crafted CAPWAP packet to an affected device, resulting in a buffer over-read. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to cause the affected device to crash and reload, resulting in a DoS condition on the affected device.
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 |
16.12 (including) |
16.12 (including) |
| Ios_xe |
Cisco |
16.12.1s (including) |
16.12.1s (including) |
| Ios_xe |
Cisco |
16.12.2 (including) |
16.12.2 (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