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Improper Neutralization of Special Elements used in an OS Command ('OS Command Injection')

CVE-2021-1594

Severity High
Score 8.1/10

Summary

A vulnerability in the REST API of Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to perform a command injection attack and elevate privileges to root. This vulnerability is due to insufficient input validation for specific API endpoints. An attacker in a man-in-the-middle position could exploit this vulnerability by intercepting and modifying specific internode communications from one ISE persona to another ISE persona. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to run arbitrary commands with root privileges on the underlying operating system. To exploit this vulnerability, the attacker would need to decrypt HTTPS traffic between two ISE personas that are located on separate nodes.

  • HIGH
  • NETWORK
  • HIGH
  • UNCHANGED
  • NONE
  • NONE
  • HIGH
  • HIGH

CWE-78 - OS Command Injection

The OS command injection weakness (also known as shell injection) is a vulnerability which enables an attacker to run arbitrary OS commands on a server. This is done by modifying the intended downstream OS command and injecting arbitrary commands, enabling the execution of unauthorized OS commands. This has the potential to fully compromise the application along with all of its data, and, if the compromised process does not follow the principle of least privileges, it may compromise other parts of the hosting infrastructure as well. This weakness is listed as number ten in the 'CWE Top 25 Most Dangerous Software Weaknesses'.

References

Advisory Timeline

  • Published