A vulnerability in multiple Cisco Unified Communications and Contact Center Solutions products could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to execute arbitrary code on an affected device. This vulnerability is due to the improper processing of user-provided data that is being read into memory. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a crafted message to a listening port of an affected device. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to execute arbitrary commands on the underlying operating system with the privileges of the web services user. With access to the underlying operating system, the attacker could also establish root access on the affected device.
The product deserializes untrusted data without sufficiently verifying that the resulting data will be valid.
| Name | Vendor | Start Version | End Version |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unified_communications_manager | Cisco | * | 12.5(1)su8 (excluding) |
| Unified_communications_manager | Cisco | 14.0 (including) | 14su3 (excluding) |
It is often convenient to serialize objects for communication or to save them for later use. However, deserialized data or code can often be modified without using the provided accessor functions if it does not use cryptography to protect itself. Furthermore, any cryptography would still be client-side security – which is a dangerous security assumption. Data that is untrusted can not be trusted to be well-formed. When developers place no restrictions on “gadget chains,” or series of instances and method invocations that can self-execute during the deserialization process (i.e., before the object is returned to the caller), it is sometimes possible for attackers to leverage them to perform unauthorized actions, like generating a shell.