Cisco Email Security Appliance Internal Testing Interface RCE

critical Nessus Plugin ID 93866

Synopsis

The remote security appliance is missing a vendor-supplied security patch.

Description

According to its self-reported version, the Cisco AsyncOS running on the remote Cisco Email Security (ESA) appliance is affected by a remote code execution vulnerability due to the presence of an internal testing and debugging interface that was not intended to be shipped on customer-available software releases. An unauthenticated, remote attacker can exploit this by connecting to the interface, allowing the attacker to obtain complete control with root-level privileges.

Solution

Apply the relevant updates referenced in Cisco Security Advisory cisco-sa-20160922-esa. Alternatively, reboot the ESA device since rebooting permanently disables the testing and debugging interface.

See Also

http://www.nessus.org/u?5cc98b0e

https://bst.cloudapps.cisco.com/bugsearch/bug/CSCvb26017

Plugin Details

Severity: Critical

ID: 93866

File Name: cisco-sa-20160922-esa.nasl

Version: 1.9

Type: combined

Family: CISCO

Published: 10/5/2016

Updated: 11/14/2019

Supported Sensors: Nessus

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Medium

Score: 5.9

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: Critical

Base Score: 10

Temporal Score: 7.4

Vector: CVSS2#AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: Critical

Base Score: 9.8

Temporal Score: 8.5

Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Temporal Vector: CVSS:3.0/E:U/RL:O/RC:C

Vulnerability Information

CPE: cpe:/h:cisco:email_security_appliance, cpe:/o:cisco:email_security_appliance_firmware

Required KB Items: Host/AsyncOS/Cisco Email Security Appliance/DisplayVersion, Host/AsyncOS/Cisco Email Security Appliance/Version

Exploit Ease: No known exploits are available

Patch Publication Date: 9/22/2016

Vulnerability Publication Date: 9/22/2016

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2016-6406

BID: 75181

CISCO-SA: cisco-sa-20160922-esa

CISCO-BUG-ID: CSCvb26017