CVE-2018-15453 Cisco Email Security Appliance Memory Corruption Denial of Service Vulnerability
Remote attackers can cause permanent denial of service on Cisco ESA devices via malicious S/MIME emails if specific features are enabled.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Not needed
- Attackable
- Over the internet
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- None listed
What is CVE-2018-15453?
CVE-2018-15453 is a high-severity memory corruption vulnerability in Cisco Email Security Appliance (ESA), published on 10 Jan 2019. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.
Official description
A vulnerability in the Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (S/MIME) Decryption and Verification or S/MIME Public Key Harvesting features of Cisco AsyncOS Software for Cisco Email Security Appliance (ESA) could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to cause an affected device to corrupt system memory. A successful exploit could cause the filtering process to unexpectedly reload, resulting in a denial of service (DoS) condition on the device. The vulnerability is due to improper input validation of S/MIME-signed emails. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a malicious S/MIME-signed email through a targeted device. If Decryption and Verification or Public Key Harvesting is configured, the filtering process could crash due to memory corruption and restart, resulting in a DoS condition. The software could then resume processing the same S/MIME-signed email, causing the filtering process to crash and restart again. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to cause a permanent DoS condition. This vulnerability may require manual intervention to recover the ESA.
Which versions are affected by CVE-2018-15453?
It affects 1 product.
Products include Cisco Email Security Appliance Firmware.
How do I fix CVE-2018-15453?
No fix has been published for CVE-2018-15453 yet. Limit exposure of the affected software until one is available.
Upgrade to the fixed version. Memory-safe languages, compiler hardening and fuzzing prevent most new cases. More about Memory corruption.
Is CVE-2018-15453 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2018-15453 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Other vulnerabilities in Cisco Email Security Appliance (ESA)
- CVE-2016-6406 Auth bypass in n/a
- CVE-2017-6671 Security feature bypass in Cisco Email Security Appliance
- CVE-2016-6458 Security feature bypass in Cisco AsyncOS 10.0.0-125 and 9.7.1-066
- CVE-2019-12706 Cisco Email Security Appliance Filter Bypass Vulnerability
- CVE-2019-15971 Cisco Email Security Appliance MP3 Content Filter Bypass Vulnerability
Sources
Also known as GHSA-62wx-gppg-6grr.