A vulnerability in the Intermediate System-to-Intermediate System (IS-IS) multi-instance routing feature of Cisco IOS XR Software could allow an unauthenticated, adjacent attacker to cause the IS-IS process to restart unexpectedly.
This vulnerability is due to insufficient input validation of ingress IS-IS packets. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending crafted IS-IS packets to an affected device after forming an adjacency. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to cause the IS-IS process to restart unexpectedly, resulting in a temporary loss of connectivity to advertised networks and a denial of service (DoS) condition. Note: The IS-IS protocol is a routing protocol. To exploit this vulnerability, an attacker must be Layer 2-adjacent to the affected device and must have formed an adjacency.
Weakness
The product receives input that is expected to be of a certain type, but it does not validate or incorrectly validates that the input is actually of the expected type.
Extended Description
When input does not comply with the expected type, attackers could trigger unexpected errors, cause incorrect actions to take place, or exploit latent vulnerabilities that would not be possible if the input conformed with the expected type. This weakness can appear in type-unsafe programming languages, or in programming languages that support casting or conversion of an input to another type.
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.