Cisco Issues IronPort Patch - Vulnerabilities exposed systems to remote crash and takeover

Cisco has issued a patch for vulnerabilities that exposed its IronPort AsyncOS software for the Cisco e-mail security appliance to cover denial-of-service and command injection problems.



The vulnerability, described here, exposed several IronPort components. Its Web framework would allow and authenticated remote user to execute arbitrary commands with elevated privileges.

“An authenticated but unprivileged attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a crafted URL to the affected system, or by convincing a valid user to click on a malicious URL. A successful exploit could allow an attacker with sufficient knowledge to take complete control of the affected device,” Cisco notes.

Cisco also notes that the IronPort spam quarantine and its management GUI are both vulnerable to denial-of-service attacks. The spam quarantine has an improper handling of TCP connection requests at high speed, while the GUI is vulnerable to DoS attacks on HTTP and HTTPS connections.

Cisco has patches available for affected software.