CVE Vulnerabilities

CVE-2023-20047

Uncontrolled Resource Consumption

Published: Jan 20, 2023 | Modified: Nov 21, 2024
CVSS 3.x
6.5
MEDIUM
Source:
NVD
CVSS:3.1/AV:A/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
CVSS 2.x
RedHat/V2
RedHat/V3
Ubuntu

A vulnerability in the Link Layer Discovery Protocol (LLDP) feature of Cisco Webex Room Phone and Cisco Webex Share devices could allow an unauthenticated, adjacent attacker to cause a denial of service (DoS) condition on an affected device. This vulnerability is due to insufficient resource allocation. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending crafted LLDP traffic to an affected device. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to exhaust the memory resources of the affected device, resulting in a crash of the LLDP process. If the affected device is configured to support LLDP only, this could cause an interruption to inbound and outbound calling. By default, these devices are configured to support both Cisco Discovery Protocol and LLDP. To recover operational state, the affected device needs a manual restart.

Weakness

The product does not properly control the allocation and maintenance of a limited resource, thereby enabling an actor to influence the amount of resources consumed, eventually leading to the exhaustion of available resources.

Affected Software

Name Vendor Start Version End Version
Webex_room_phone_firmware Cisco * 1.2.0 (including)

Extended Description

Limited resources include memory, file system storage, database connection pool entries, and CPU. If an attacker can trigger the allocation of these limited resources, but the number or size of the resources is not controlled, then the attacker could cause a denial of service that consumes all available resources. This would prevent valid users from accessing the product, and it could potentially have an impact on the surrounding environment. For example, a memory exhaustion attack against an application could slow down the application as well as its host operating system. There are at least three distinct scenarios which can commonly lead to resource exhaustion:

Resource exhaustion problems are often result due to an incorrect implementation of the following situations:

Potential Mitigations

  • 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.

References