A vulnerability in the software upgrade component of Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC) and Cisco Cloud Network Controller, formerly Cisco Cloud APIC, could allow an authenticated, remote attacker with Administrator-level privileges to install a modified software image, leading to arbitrary code injection on an affected system.
This vulnerability is due to insufficient signature validation of software images. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by installing a modified software image. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to execute arbitrary code on the affected system and elevate their privileges to root. Note: Administrators should always validate the hash of any upgrade image before uploading it to Cisco APIC and Cisco Cloud Network Controller.
The product performs an operation at a privilege level that is higher than the minimum level required, which creates new weaknesses or amplifies the consequences of other weaknesses.
New weaknesses can be exposed because running with extra privileges, such as root or Administrator, can disable the normal security checks being performed by the operating system or surrounding environment. Other pre-existing weaknesses can turn into security vulnerabilities if they occur while operating at raised privileges. Privilege management functions can behave in some less-than-obvious ways, and they have different quirks on different platforms. These inconsistencies are particularly pronounced if you are transitioning from one non-root user to another. Signal handlers and spawned processes run at the privilege of the owning process, so if a process is running as root when a signal fires or a sub-process is executed, the signal handler or sub-process will operate with root privileges.