Cisco fixes critical remote command execution vulnerability in Secure Access Control Server

Cisco Systems released security patches for Secure Access Control Server (Secure ACS) for Windows to address a critical vulnerability that could allow unauthenticated attackers to remotely execute arbitrary commands and take control of the underlying operating system.

Cisco Secure ACS is an application that allows companies to centrally manage access to network resources for various types of devices and users. According to Cisco's documentation, it enforces access control policies for VPN, wireless and other network users and it authenticates administrators, authorizes commands, and provides an audit trail.

[ InfoWorld's expert contributors show you how to secure your Web browsers in a free PDF guide. Download it today! | Learn how to protect your systems with Roger Grimes' Security Adviser blog and Security Central newsletter, both from InfoWorld. ]

Cisco Secure ACS supports two network access control protocols: Remote Access Dial In User Service (RADIUS) and Terminal Access Controller Access-Control System Plus (TACACS+).

The newly patched vulnerability is identified as CVE-2013-3466 and affects Cisco Secure ACS for Windows versions 4.0 through 4.2.1.15 when configured as a RADIUS server with Extensible Authentication Protocol-Flexible Authentication via Secure Tunneling (EAP-FAST) authentication.

"The vulnerability is due to improper parsing of user identities used for EAP-FAST authentication," Cisco said Wednesday in a security advisory. "An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending crafted EAP-FAST packets to an affected device."

"Successful exploitation of the vulnerability may allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to execute arbitrary commands and take full control of the underlying operating system that hosts the Cisco Secure ACS application in the context of the System user for Cisco Secure ACS running on Microsoft Windows," the company said.

The vulnerability received the maximum severity score, 10.0, in the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS), which indicates that it is highly critical. Cisco Secure ACS for Windows version 4.2.1.15.11 was released to address the flaw.

There are no known workarounds, so upgrading to the patched version of the application is recommended.

View the original article here

What is a vulnerability?

Network World - Judging by initial appearances, our security testing turned up a ton of vulnerabilities nearly 150 of them. In reality, however, none represented actual issues in the Huawei switch.

Both the security test tools we used Spirent's Mu-8010 and Rapid7's Metasploit produce nicely formatted reports explaining each attack. The reports go into detail as to what each attack does, and why the vulnerability would be a problem. "Would be" is the operative phrase here; the reports do not document what actually happened on the switch.

Spirent's Mu tool performs health checks after each SSH fuzzing attack, sending a new, valid SSH connection request to determine if the daemon is still open for business. If the device doesn't respond to the connection request, the Spirent tool flags this as a fault, and tries again. The greater the number of failed retry requests, the higher the confidence level in the fault shown in the Spirent report. Metasploit's reporting is simpler; it tabulates on how many vulnerabilities and cracked passwords it found.

The issue with both approaches is that they report only from the tester's side, not from the switch. Suppose, for example, an SSH overflow attack caused the SSH daemon to be unresponsive for a couple of seconds. That would get flagged as a fault, but it's not the same thing as saying an overflow actually occurred.

The key here is checking the switch, not just the test tool. In the case of a successful overflow attack, logging or other monitoring would show that the attack resulted in privilege escalation, a system hang, or other problems. That kind of checking is essential to complete the picture. That's why we ran additional monitoring, external to our security test tools, to verify the switch's control- and data-plane availability.

Thus, none of the many faults found in security testing were actual vulnerabilities. All they indicated was that the switch's SSH server was busy and a daemon that can't do additional work shouldn't answer new connection requests, in our view.

Return to main test.

Read more about wide area network in Network World's Wide Area Network section.

Reprinted with permission from NetworkWorld.com. Story copyright 2012 Network World, Inc. All rights reserved.

View the original article here

Cybercriminals add new exploit for recently patched Java vulnerability to their arsenal

Cybercriminals were quick to integrate a newly released exploit for a Java vulnerability patched in June into a tool used to launch mass attacks against users, an independent malware researcher warned.

The exploit targets a critical vulnerability identified as CVE-2013-2465 that affects all Java versions older than Java 7 Update 25 and can enable remote code execution. The vulnerability was patched by Oracle in its June Critical Patch Update for Java.

The exploit was released Monday by security research group Packet Storm Security, which originally acquired it through its bug bounty program as a zero-day exploit—an exploit for an unpatched vulnerability—from a researcher whose name was not disclosed. Packet Storm publishes the exploits it acquires 60 days after it receives them, with permission from their authors, so other security professionals can use them to perform penetration tests and security risk assessments.

Two days after its release, the CVE-2013-2465 exploit was already integrated into so-called exploit kits, attack tools that infect computers with malware by exploiting vulnerabilities in outdated software when users visit compromised websites.

An independent malware researcher who uses the online alias Kafeine found a live installation of the Styx exploit kit, previously known as Kein, that is using the exploit.

From an attacker’s perspective the exploit for CVE-2013-2465 is better than the exploit for CVE-2013-2460, another Java vulnerability also patched in June, that was recently integrated into a different attack toolkit called the Private Exploit Pack, Kafeine said Thursday in a blog post. That’s because CVE-2013-2465 affects both Java 7 and Java 6 installations, while CVE-2013-2460 only affects Java 7, he said.

Oracle ended its public support for Java 6 in April and will no longer release security updates for it to all users. Despite this, Java 6 is still widely used, especially in enterprise environments.

A recent study by security firm Bit9 showed that more than 80 percent of Java-enabled enterprise computers have Java 6 installed on them. The most widely deployed Java version on those systems was Java 6 Update 20.

The latest publicly available version of Java 6 is Java 6 Update 45, which is also affected by CVE-2013-2465. The vulnerability was patched in Java 6 Update 51, but this version is only available to users who have extended support contracts with Oracle.

The fact that an exploit for CVE-2013-2465 is publicly available and has already been integrated in mass attack toolkits suggests that this vulnerability will soon see widespread exploitation. Users who have yet to upgrade to Java 7 Update 25 might want to do so as soon as possible.

View the original article here