Cisco on Thursday informed customers that it has patched 34 high-severity vulnerabilities affecting its IOS and IOS XE software, including many that can be exploited remotely without authentication.
The company has released a total of 25 advisories as part of the September 2020 semiannual IOS and IOS XE Software Security Advisory Bundled Publication. These patch bundles are typically released on the fourth Wednesday of March and September every year, but this year the first one was issued in early June.
Many of the vulnerabilities described in these advisories require local access and/or authentication for exploitation, in some cases even elevated privileges. The vulnerabilities that can be exploited remotely without authentication allow denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, and one may also allow an attacker to gain access to sensitive data.
The DoS vulnerabilities that can be exploited by a remote, unauthenticated attacker are related to the Common Open Policy Service (COPS) engine, incorrect packet processing, Control and Provisioning of Wireless Access Points (CAPWAP) protocol processing, RESTCONF and NETCONF-YANG access control list functions, the LPWA subsystem in industrial routers, handling of DHCP messages, the Umbrella Connector component, the Flexible NetFlow version 9 packet processor, the IP Service Level Agreement (SLA) responder feature, the multicast DNS (mDNS) feature, the Zone-Based Firewall, and the Split DNS feature.
Two of the security holes can allow arbitrary code execution, but they require local access to the targeted system and authentication. One flaw can be exploited by an authenticated attacker to access some parts of the user interface they normally should not be able to access.
Cisco has also informed customers of two high-severity vulnerabilities affecting Aironet access points. Both can be exploited to cause a DoS condition on targeted devices, but one of them can be exploited remotely without authentication by sending a series of specially crafted UDP packets to affected access points.
Many of the vulnerabilities were found internally by Cisco and the networking giant says it has found no evidence that the vulnerabilities have been exploited for malicious purposes.
Related: Cisco Patches Serious Vulnerabilities in Data Center Network Manager
Related: Cisco Patches High-Severity Vulnerabilities in NX-OS Software
Related: Cisco Patches Vulnerabilities in Small Business Routers, Switches
Eduard Kovacs (@EduardKovacs) is a contributing 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.
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