CVE-2017-12238 Cisco Catalyst 6800 Series Switches VPLS Denial-of-Service
An unauthenticated adjacent attacker can crash a Cisco Catalyst 6800 line card by flooding VPLS MAC entries, causing a denial of service.
- Exploited in the wild
- Since 3 Mar 2022
- Login needed
- Not needed
- Attackable
- Local or same network only
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- None listed
What is CVE-2017-12238?
CVE-2017-12238 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Cisco Ios, published on 28 Sep 2017. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.
Official description
A vulnerability in the Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS) code of Cisco IOS 15.0 through 15.4 for Cisco Catalyst 6800 Series Switches could allow an unauthenticated, adjacent attacker to cause a C6800-16P10G or C6800-16P10G-XL type line card to crash, resulting in a denial of service (DoS) condition. The vulnerability is due to a memory management issue in the affected software. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by creating a large number of VPLS-generated MAC entries in the MAC address table of an affected device. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to cause a C6800-16P10G or C6800-16P10G-XL type line card to crash, resulting in a DoS condition. This vulnerability affects Cisco Catalyst 6800 Series Switches that are running a vulnerable release of Cisco IOS Software and have a Cisco C6800-16P10G or C6800-16P10G-XL line card in use with Supervisor Engine 6T. To be vulnerable, the device must also be configured with VPLS and the C6800-16P10G or C6800-16P10G-XL line card needs to be the core-facing MPLS interfaces. Cisco Bug IDs: CSCva61927.
Weakness: CWE-399
Which versions are affected by CVE-2017-12238?
It affects 1 product.
Products include Cisco Ios.
How do I fix CVE-2017-12238?
No fix has been published for CVE-2017-12238 yet. Limit exposure of the affected software until one is available. US federal agencies must fix it by 24 Mar 2022.
Upgrade, then put limits on request size, rate and nesting depth so one client cannot exhaust the service. More about Denial of service.
Is CVE-2017-12238 being exploited?
Yes. Attackers have exploited CVE-2017-12238 in the wild since at least 3 Mar 2022.
Other vulnerabilities in Cisco Ios
- CVE-2017-12240 Cisco IOS and IOS XE Software DHCP Remote Code Execution
- CVE-2017-3881 Cisco IOS and IOS XE Remote Code Execution
- CVE-2018-0167 Cisco IOS, XR, and XE Software Buffer Overflow
- CVE-2017-6736 Cisco IOS and IOS XE Software SNMP Remote Code Execution
- CVE-2017-6737 Cisco IOS and IOS XE Software SNMP Remote Code Execution
Sources
Also known as GHSA-g8w4-jc9x-6qpc.