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Improper Privilege Management

CVE-2021-1447

Severity Medium
Score 6.7/10

Summary

A vulnerability in the user account management system of Cisco AsyncOS for Cisco Content Security Management Appliance (SMA) could allow an authenticated, local attacker to elevate their privileges to root. This vulnerability is due to a procedural flaw in the password generation algorithm. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by enabling specific Administrator-only features and connecting to the appliance through the CLI with elevated privileges. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to execute arbitrary commands as root and access the underlying operating system. To exploit this vulnerability, the attacker must have valid Administrator credentials.

  • LOW
  • LOCAL
  • HIGH
  • UNCHANGED
  • NONE
  • HIGH
  • HIGH
  • HIGH

CWE-269 - Improper Privilege Management

An effective privilege management infrastructure provides valid users with required access and privileges across heterogeneous technology environments. An application with a faulty privilege management infrastructure allows higher than authorized privileges or enables privilege escalation. This can lead to security incidents such as system infiltration, data breach, and complete system takeover.

References

Advisory Timeline

  • Published