Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

SecurityWeekSecurityWeek

Network Security

Critical Flaw Exposes Cisco Collaboration Products to Hacking

A dozen Cisco collaboration products using the company’s Voice Operating System (VOS) are exposed to remote hacker attacks due to a critical vulnerability, users were warned on Wednesday.

A dozen Cisco collaboration products using the company’s Voice Operating System (VOS) are exposed to remote hacker attacks due to a critical vulnerability, users were warned on Wednesday.

According to Cisco, the flaw affects an upgrade mechanism of products based on VOS. A remote, unauthenticated attacker can exploit the security hole, tracked as CVE-2017-12337, to gain access to vulnerable devices with root privileges.

“The vulnerability occurs when a refresh upgrade or Prime Collaboration Deployment (PCD) migration is performed on an affected device,” Cisco said in its advisory. “When a refresh upgrade or PCD migration is completed successfully, an engineering flag remains enabled and could allow root access to the device with a known password.”

Exploiting the vulnerability over SSH File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) can allow an attacker to take complete control of an affected system, Cisco warned.

The list of impacted products includes Cisco Unified Communications Manager, Emergency Responder, Unity Connection, Prime License Manager, Hosted Collaboration Mediation Fulfillment, Unified Contact Center Express, SocialMiner, Unified Intelligence Center, Finesse, and MediaSense. Products such as Identity Service, Prime Collaboration, and Virtualized Voice Browser are not vulnerable.

Cisco has released software updates that address the vulnerability and pointed out that the security hole is also plugged if an affected device is upgraded to an Engineering Special Release, service update, or a new major update via a standard upgrade method.

The advisory published by the company provides information on all the affected versions and the patches that can be applied for each of them.

Cisco credited researchers of the State Farm Penetration Testing Team for finding the vulnerability, and said it was not aware of any malicious attacks exploiting it.

Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.

US-CERT has also published an alert to warn users about this critical vulnerability.

Related: Cisco Fixes Severe Flaws in Prime Collaboration Product

Related: Cisco Patches Serious Flaws in Collaboration Products

Related: Cisco Closes Backdoor to Umbrella Virtual Appliances

Written By

Eduard Kovacs (@EduardKovacs) is a managing editor at SecurityWeek. He worked as a high school IT teacher for two years before starting a career in journalism as Softpedia’s security news reporter. Eduard holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial informatics and a master’s degree in computer techniques applied in electrical engineering.

Click to comment

Trending

Daily Briefing Newsletter

Subscribe to the SecurityWeek Email Briefing to stay informed on the latest threats, trends, and technology, along with insightful columns from industry experts.

Join the session as we discuss the challenges and best practices for cybersecurity leaders managing cloud identities.

Register

SecurityWeek’s Ransomware Resilience and Recovery Summit helps businesses to plan, prepare, and recover from a ransomware incident.

Register

Expert Insights

Related Content

Vulnerabilities

Less than a week after announcing that it would suspended service indefinitely due to a conflict with an (at the time) unnamed security researcher...

Identity & Access

Zero trust is not a replacement for identity and access management (IAM), but is the extension of IAM principles from people to everyone and...

Data Breaches

OpenAI has confirmed a ChatGPT data breach on the same day a security firm reported seeing the use of a component affected by an...

IoT Security

A group of seven security researchers have discovered numerous vulnerabilities in vehicles from 16 car makers, including bugs that allowed them to control car...

Vulnerabilities

A researcher at IOActive discovered that home security systems from SimpliSafe are plagued by a vulnerability that allows tech savvy burglars to remotely disable...

Risk Management

The supply chain threat is directly linked to attack surface management, but the supply chain must be known and understood before it can be...

Cybercrime

Patch Tuesday: Microsoft calls attention to a series of zero-day remote code execution attacks hitting its Office productivity suite.

Vulnerabilities

Patch Tuesday: Microsoft warns vulnerability (CVE-2023-23397) could lead to exploitation before an email is viewed in the Preview Pane.