Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling

Summary

A vulnerability in the TCP throttling process for Cisco IoT Field Network Director (IoT-FND) could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to cause the system to consume additional memory, eventually forcing the device to restart, aka Memory Exhaustion. The vulnerability is due to insufficient rate-limiting protection. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a high rate of TCP packets to a specific group of open listening ports on a targeted device. An exploit could allow the attacker to cause the system to consume additional memory. If enough available memory is consumed, the system will restart, creating a temporary denial of service (DoS) condition. The DoS condition will end after the device has finished the restart process. This vulnerability affects the following Cisco products: Connected Grid Network Management System, if running a software release prior to IoT-FND Release 4.0; IoT Field Network Director, if running a software release prior to IoT-FND Release 4.0. Cisco Bug IDs: CSCvc77164.