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Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer

CVE-2019-1901

High
8.8/10

Summary

A vulnerability in the Link Layer Discovery Protocol (LLDP) subsystem of Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) Mode Switch Software could allow an adjacent, unauthenticated attacker to cause a denial of service (DoS) condition or execute arbitrary code with root privileges. The vulnerability is due to improper input validation of certain type, length, value (TLV) fields of the LLDP frame header. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a crafted LLDP packet to the targeted device. A successful exploit may lead to a buffer overflow condition that could either cause a DoS condition or allow the attacker to execute arbitrary code with root privileges. Note: This vulnerability cannot be exploited by transit traffic through the device; the crafted packet must be targeted to a directly connected interface. This vulnerability affects Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Fabric Switches in ACI mode if they are running a Cisco Nexus 9000 Series ACI Mode Switch Software release prior to 13.2(7f) or any 14.x release.

  • LOW
  • ADJACENT_NETWORK
  • HIGH
  • UNCHANGED
  • NONE
  • NONE
  • HIGH
  • HIGH

CWE-119 - Buffer Overflow

Buffer overflow attacks involve data transit and operations exceeding the restricted memory buffer, thereby corrupting or overwriting data in adjacent memory locations. Such overflow allows the attacker to run arbitrary code or manipulate the existing code to cause privilege escalation, data breach, denial of service, system crash and even complete system compromise. Given that languages such as C and C++ lack default safeguards against overwriting or accessing data in their memory, applications utilizing these languages are most susceptible to buffer overflows attacks.

References

Advisory Timeline

  • Published