# CVE-2013-5521: Denial of service in n/a

> Remote attackers can exhaust the guest account supply in Cisco Identity Services Engine, causing a denial of service.

- **Severity:** Medium 5.0 (`AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P`)
- **Exploited in the wild:** Not known
- **Login needed:** Not needed
- **Attackable:** Over the internet
- **Victim action needed:** Not needed
- **Fix available:** No
- **Published:** 25 Oct 2013
- **Updated:** 16 Sep 2024
- **Also known as:** GHSA-x33p-qmp7-g8rf

## What is CVE-2013-5521?

CVE-2013-5521 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in n/a, published on 25 Oct 2013. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.

### Official description

Cisco Identity Services Engine does not properly restrict the creation of guest accounts, which allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (exhaustion of the account supply) via a series of requests within one session, aka Bug ID CSCue94287.

Weakness: CWE-264

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2013-5521?

It affects 1 product.


Products: Cisco Identity Services Engine Software.

## How do I fix CVE-2013-5521?

No fix has been published for CVE-2013-5521 yet. Limit exposure of the affected software until one is available.

## Is CVE-2013-5521 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2013-5521 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Other vulnerabilities in n/a

- [CVE-2015-6323](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2015-6323/): Auth bypass in n/a (critical 9.8)
- [CVE-2013-5530](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2013-5530/): Command injection in n/a (critical 9.0)
- [CVE-2018-0413](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2018-0413/): Cross-site request forgery in Cisco Identity Services Engine unknown (high 8.8)
- [CVE-2017-3835](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2017-3835/): SQL injection in Cisco Identity Services Engine (high 8.8)
- [CVE-2017-12316](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2017-12316/): Auth bypass in Cisco Identity Services Engine (high 7.5)

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2013-5521 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2013-5521 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in n/a, published on 25 Oct 2013. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.
Exploitation: There is no known exploitation of CVE-2013-5521 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected product: n/a. No package-level version data is available, so check the vendor advisory linked from the reference page.

Task:
1. Search the dependency manifests and lockfiles (for example package.json, package-lock.json, requirements.txt, poetry.lock, uv.lock, pom.xml, build.gradle, go.mod, Cargo.lock, Gemfile.lock) and any Dockerfiles for the affected packages, including transitive dependencies.
2. If an affected version is in use, upgrade it to the fixed version for its release line with the project's package manager, so the lockfile is regenerated. Prefer the smallest upgrade that fixes it.
3. If there is no fix, or the upgrade would break the build, do not guess: explain the risk and the safest workaround instead.
4. Run the tests and summarise what changed and why.
5. If nothing in the project is affected, say so and change nothing.

Reference: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2013-5521/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2013-5521/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2013-5521
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2013-5521
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2013-5521

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2013-5521/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.