Worldwide [change] |Account |Register |About Cisco
Guest

Hierarchical Navigation

Products & Services

Cisco Applied Mitigation Bulletin: Identifying and Mitigating Exploitation of the Cisco Unified Communications Web-based Management Vulnerability

Downloads

Document ID: 99696


http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/707/cisco-amb-20071017-IPCC.shtml

Revision 1.1

Last Updated 2007 October 23 0230 UTC (GMT)

For Public Release 2007 October 22 2215 UTC (GMT)

Contents

Cisco Response
Device Specific Mitigation and Identification
Additional Information
Revision History
Cisco Security Procedures
Related Information

Cisco Response

This Applied Mitigation Bulletin is a companion document to the PSIRT Security Advisory Cisco Unified Communications Web-Based Management Vulnerability and provides identification and mitigation techniques that administrators can deploy on Cisco network devices.

Vulnerability Characteristics

The Cisco Unified Communications Manager Web-Based Management interface contains an authorization vulnerability for users with valid credentials. This vulnerability could allow a valid, but unauthorized user privileged access to the web-based reporting and scripting tool and administrative access to the web-based configuration tool. This vulnerability can be exploited remotely with authentication and without end-user interaction. The attack vector for exploitation is through HTTP using TCP port 80 and HTTPS using TCP port 443.

Successful exploitation of this vulnerability may allow information disclosure, which could enable an attacker to learn information about the affected device. Exploitation may also allow the attacker to change configurations. This vulnerability has been assigned CVE name CVE-2007-5539.

Information about vulnerable, unaffected, and fixed software is available in the PSIRT Security Advisory, which is available at the following link: http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/707/cisco-sa-20071017-IPCC.shtml.

Mitigation Technique Overview

Cisco devices provide several countermeasures for the web-based management vulnerability. Administrators are advised to consider these protection methods to be general security best practices for infrastructure devices and the traffic that transits the network.

Cisco IOS Software can provide effective means of exploit prevention using transit access control lists (tACLs).

This protection mechanism filters and drops packets that are attempting to exploit the vulnerability described in this document.

Effective exploit prevention can also be provided by the Cisco ASA 5500 Series Adaptive Security Appliance, the Cisco PIX 500 Series Security Appliance, and the Firewall Services Module (FWSM) for Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series switches and Cisco 7600 Series routers using transit access control lists (tACLs).

This protection mechanism filters and drops packets that are attempting to exploit the vulnerability described in this document.

Cisco IOS NetFlow can provide visibility into these exploitation attempts using flow records.

Cisco IOS Software, Cisco ASA, Cisco PIX security appliances, and FWSM firewalls can provide visibility through syslog messages and the counter values displayed in the output from show commands.

Risk Management

Organizations should follow their standard risk evaluation and mitigation processes to determine the potential impact of this vulnerability. Triage refers to sorting projects and prioritizing efforts that are most likely to be successful. Cisco has provided documents that can help organizations develop a risk-based triage capability for their information security teams. Risk Triage for Security Vulnerability Announcements and Risk Triage and Prototyping in Information Security Engagements can help organizations develop repeatable security evaluation and response processes.

Device Specific Mitigation and Identification

caution Caution: The effectiveness of any mitigation technique is dependent on specific customer situations such as product mix, network topology, traffic behavior, and organizational mission. As with any configuration change, evaluate the impact of this configuration prior to applying the change.

Specific information about mitigation and identification is available for these devices:

Cisco IOS Routers and Switches

Mitigation: Transit Access Control Lists

In an effort to protect the network from traffic that enters at ingress access points, which may include Internet connection points, partner and supplier connection points, or VPN connection points, administrators should deploy transit access control lists (tACLs) to perform policy enforcement. Administrators can construct a tACL by explicitly permitting only authorized traffic to enter the network at ingress access points or permitting authorized traffic to transit the network in accordance with existing security policies and configurations.

The tACL policy denies unauthorized HTTP packets on TCP port 80 and HTTPS packets on TCP port 443 sent to affected devices. In the following example, 192.168.1.0/24 is the network IP address space used by the affected devices, and the host at 192.168.100.1 is considered a trusted source that requires access to the affected devices. Care should be taken to allow required traffic for routing and administrative access prior to denying all unauthorized traffic.

Additional information about tACLs is available in Transit Access Control Lists: Filtering at Your Edge.


!--- Include any explicit permit statements for trusted sources
!--- that require access on the vulnerable ports

access-list 150 permit tcp host 192.168.100.1 192.168.1.0 0.0.0.255 eq www
access-list 150 permit tcp host 192.168.100.1 192.168.1.0 0.0.0.255 eq 443

!--- The following vulnerability-specific access control entries
!--- (ACEs) can aid in identification of attacks

access-list 150 deny tcp any 192.168.1.0 0.0.0.255 eq www
access-list 150 deny tcp any 192.168.1.0 0.0.0.255 eq 443

!--- Permit/deny all other Layer 3 and Layer 4 traffic in accordance
!--- with existing security policies and configurations
    
!--- Explicit deny for all other IP traffic

access-list 150 deny ip any any

!--- Apply tACL to interfaces in the ingress direction

interface GigabitEthernet0/0
 ip access-group 150 in

Note that filtering with an interface access list will elicit the transmission of ICMP unreachable messages back to the source of the filtered traffic. Generating these messages could have the undesired effect of increasing CPU utilization on the device. In Cisco IOS Software, ICMP unreachable generation is limited to one packet every 500 milliseconds by default. ICMP unreachable message generation can be disabled using the interface configuration command no ip unreachables. ICMP unreachable rate limiting can be changed from the default using the global configuration command ip icmp rate-limit unreachable interval-in-ms.

Identification: Transit Access Control Lists

After the administrator applies the tACL to an interface, the show ip access-lists command will identify the number of HTTP packets on TCP port 80 and HTTPS packets on TCP port 443 that have been filtered. Administrators should investigate filtered packets to determine whether they are attempts to exploit this vulnerability. Example output for show ip access-lists 150 follows:

router#show ip access-lists 150
Extended IP access list 150
    10 permit tcp host 192.168.100.1 192.168.1.0 0.0.0.255 eq www
    20 permit tcp host 192.168.100.1 192.168.1.0 0.0.0.255 eq 443
    30 deny tcp any 192.168.1.0 0.0.0.255 eq www (12 matches)
    40 deny tcp any 192.168.1.0 0.0.0.255 eq 443 (10 matches)
    50 deny ip any any
router#

In the preceding example, access list 150 has dropped 12 HTTP packets on TCP port 80 for ACE sequence ID 30 and 10 HTTPS packets on TCP port 443 for ACE sequence ID 40.

Identification: Access List Logging

The log or log-input access control list (ACL) option will cause packets that match specific ACEs to be logged. The log-input option enables logging of the ingress interface in addition to the packet source and destination IP addresses and ports.

caution Caution: Access control list logging can be very CPU intensive and must be used with extreme caution. Factors that drive the CPU impact of ACL logging are log generation, log transmission, and process switching to forward packets that match log-enabled ACEs.

The CPU impact from ACL logging can be addressed in hardware on the Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series switches and Cisco 7600 Series routers with Supervisor Engine 720 or Supervisor Engine 32 using optimized ACL logging.

For Cisco IOS Software, the ip access-list logging interval interval-in-ms command can limit the effects of process switching induced by ACL logging. The logging rate-limit rate-per-second [except loglevel] command limits the impact of log generation and transmission.

For additional information about the configuration and use of ACL logging, reference the Understanding Access Control List Logging Applied Intelligence white paper.

Cisco IOS NetFlow

Identification: Traffic Flow Identification Using NetFlow Records

Administrators can configure Cisco IOS NetFlow on Cisco IOS routers and switches to aid in the identification of traffic flows that may be attempts to exploit the vulnerability described in this document. Administrators should investigate flows to determine whether they are attempts to exploit this vulnerability or whether they are legitimate traffic flows.

router#show ip cache flow
IP packet size distribution (90784136 total packets):
   1-32   64   96  128  160  192  224  256  288  320  352  384  416  448  480
   .000 .698 .011 .001 .004 .005 .000 .004 .000 .000 .003 .000 .000 .000 .000

    512  544  576 1024 1536 2048 2560 3072 3584 4096 4608
   .000 .001 .256 .000 .010 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000

IP Flow Switching Cache, 4456704 bytes
  1885 active, 63651 inactive, 59960004 added
  129803821 ager polls, 0 flow alloc failures
  Active flows timeout in 30 minutes
  Inactive flows timeout in 15 seconds
IP Sub Flow Cache, 402056 bytes
  0 active, 16384 inactive, 0 added, 0 added to flow
  0 alloc failures, 0 force free
  1 chunk, 1 chunk added
  last clearing of statistics never
Protocol         Total    Flows   Packets Bytes  Packets Active(Sec) Idle(Sec)
--------         Flows     /Sec     /Flow  /Pkt     /Sec     /Flow     /Flow
TCP-Telnet    11393421      2.8         1    48      3.1       0.0       1.4
TCP-FTP            236      0.0        12    66      0.0       1.8       4.8
TCP-FTPD            21      0.0     13726  1294      0.0      18.4       4.1
TCP-WWW          22282      0.0        21  1020      0.1       4.1       7.3
TCP-X              719      0.0         1    40      0.0       0.0       1.3
TCP-BGP              1      0.0         1    40      0.0       0.0      15.0
TCP-Frag         70399      0.0         1   688      0.0       0.0      22.7
TCP-other     47861004     11.8         1   211     18.9       0.0       1.3
UDP-DNS            582      0.0         4    73      0.0       3.4      15.4
UDP-NTP         287252      0.0         1    76      0.0       0.0      15.5
UDP-other       310347      0.0         2   230      0.1       0.6      15.9
ICMP             11674      0.0         3    61      0.0      19.8      15.5
IPv6INIP            15      0.0         1  1132      0.0       0.0      15.4
GRE                  4      0.0         1    48      0.0       0.0      15.3 
Total:        59957957     14.8         1   196     22.5       0.0       1.5

SrcIf         SrcIPaddress    DstIf         DstIPaddress    Pr SrcP DstP  Pkts
Gi0/0         192.168.10.201  Gi0/1         192.168.1.102   06 3984 0050     1
Gi0/0         192.168.11.54   Gi0/1         192.168.1.158   06 1111 01BB     3
Gi0/1         192.168.150.60  Gi0/0         10.89.16.226    06 0016 12CA     1
Gi0/0         192.168.13.97   Gi0/1         192.168.1.28    06 843E 0050     5
Gi0/0         192.168.10.17   Gi0/1         192.168.1.97    06 8089 01BB     1
Gi0/0         10.88.226.1     Gi0/1         192.168.202.22  11 007B 007B     1
Gi0/0         192.168.12.185  Gi0/1         192.168.1.239   06 27D7 0050     1
Gi0/0         10.89.16.226    Gi0/1         192.168.150.60  06 12CA 0016     1
router#

In the preceding example, there are multiple flows for HTTP on TCP port 80 (hex value 0050) and HTTPS on TCP port 443 (hex value 01BB). Administrators should compare these flows to baseline utilization for HTTP traffic sent on TCP port 80 and HTTPS traffic sent on TCP port 443 and also investigate the flows to determine whether they are sourced from untrusted hosts or networks.

To view only the traffic flows to addresses in the 192.168.1.x subnet for HTTP packets on TCP ports 80 (hex value 0050) and HTTPS packets on TCP port 443 (hex value 01BB), the command show ip cache flow | include SrcIf|192\.168\.1\..*_06_.*(0050|01BB) will display the related NetFlow records as shown here:

router#show ip cache flow | include SrcIf|192\.168\.1\..*_06_.*(0050|01BB)
SrcIf         SrcIPaddress     DstIf         DstIPaddress    Pr SrcP DstP  Pkts
Gi0/0         192.168.12.110   Gi0/1         192.168.1.163   06 392A 0050     6
Gi0/0         192.168.11.230   Gi0/1         192.168.1.20    06 1109 01BB     1
Gi0/0         192.168.11.131   Gi0/1         192.168.1.245   06 8456 01BB    18
Gi0/0         192.168.13.7     Gi0/1         192.168.1.162   06 2720 01BB     1
Gi0/0         192.168.41.86    Gi0/1         192.168.1.27    06 1193 0050     2
router#

Cisco ASA, PIX, and FWSM Firewalls

Mitigation: Transit Access Control Lists

In an effort to protect the network from traffic that enters at ingress access points, which may include Internet connection points, partner and supplier connection points, or VPN connection points, administrators should deploy tACLs to perform policy enforcement. Administrators can construct a tACL by explicitly permitting only authorized traffic to enter the network at ingress access points or permitting authorized traffic to transit the network in accordance with existing security policies and configurations.

The tACL policy denies unauthorized HTTP packets on TCP port 80 and HTTPS packets on TCP port 443 sent to affected devices. In the following example, 192.168.1.0/24 is the network IP address space used by the affected devices, and the host at 192.168.100.1 is considered a trusted source that requires access to the affected devices. Care should be taken to allow required traffic for routing and administrative access prior to denying all unauthorized traffic.

Additional information about tACLs is available in Transit Access Control Lists: Filtering at Your Edge.


!--- Include any explicit permit statements for trusted sources
!--- that require access on the vulnerable ports

access-list Transit-ACL-Policy extended permit tcp host 192.168.100.1 192.168.1.0 255.255.255.0 eq www
access-list Transit-ACL-Policy extended permit tcp host 192.168.100.1 192.168.1.0 255.255.255.0 eq https

!--- The following vulnerability-specific access control entries
!--- (ACEs) can aid in identification of attacks

access-list Transit-ACL-Policy extended deny tcp any 192.168.1.0 255.255.255.0 eq www
access-list Transit-ACL-Policy extended deny tcp any 192.168.1.0 255.255.255.0 eq https

!--- Permit/deny all other Layer 3 and Layer 4 traffic in accordance
!--- with existing security policies and configurations

!--- Explicit deny for all other IP traffic

access-list Transit-ACL-Policy extended deny ip any any

!--- Apply tACL to interfaces in the ingress direction

access-group Transit-ACL-Policy in interface outside

Identification: Transit Access Control Lists

After the tACL has been applied to an interface, administrators can use the show access-list command to identify the number of HTTP packets on TCP port 80 and HTTPS packets on TCP port 443 that have been filtered. Administrators should investigate filtered packets to determine whether they are attempts to exploit this vulnerability. Example output for show access-list Transit-ACL-Policy follows:

firewall#show access-list Transit-ACL-Policy
access-list Transit-ACL-Policy; 5 elements
access-list Transit-ACL-Policy line 1 extended permit tcp host 192.168.100.1 192.168.1.0 255.255.255.0 eq www (hitcnt=34)
access-list Transit-ACL-Policy line 2 extended permit tcp host 192.168.100.1 192.168.1.0 255.255.255.0 eq https (hitcnt=34)
access-list Transit-ACL-Policy line 3 extended deny tcp any 192.168.1.0 255.255.255.0 eq www (hitcnt=20)
access-list Transit-ACL-Policy line 4 extended deny tcp any 192.168.1.0 255.255.255.0 eq https (hitcnt=11)
access-list Transit-ACL-Policy line 5 extended deny ip any any (hitcnt=8)
firewall#

In the preceding example, the access list Transit-ACL-Policy has dropped 20 HTTP packets on TCP port 80 and 11 HTTPS packets on TCP port 443 received from an untrusted host or network. In addition, syslog message 106023 can provide valuable information, which includes the source and destination IP address, the source and destination port numbers, and the IP protocol for the denied packet.

Identification: Firewall Access-list Syslog Messages

Firewall syslog message 106023 will be generated for packets denied by an access control entry (ACE) that does not have the log keyword present. Additional information about this syslog message is available in Cisco Security Appliance System Log Message - 106023.

Information about configuring syslog for the Cisco ASA 5500 Series Adaptive Security Appliance or the Cisco PIX 500 Series Security Appliance is available in Configuring Logging on the Cisco Security Appliance. Information about configuring syslog on the FWSM for Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series switches and Cisco 7600 Series routers is available in Configuring Monitoring and Logging on the Cisco FWSM.

In the following example, the show logging | grep regex command extracts syslog messages from the logging buffer on the firewall. These messages provide additional information about denied packets that could indicate attempts to exploit the vulnerability described in this document. It is possible to use different regular expressions with the grep keyword to search for specific data in the logged messages.

Additional information about regular expression syntax is available in Using the Command Line Interface.

firewall#show logging | grep 106023
Feb 21 2007 00:15:13: %ASA-4-106023: Deny tcp src outside:192.168.2.118/1923 dst
   inside:192.168.1.201/443 by access-group "Transit-ACL-Policy"
Feb 21 2007 00:15:13: %ASA-4-106023: Deny tcp src outside:192.168.3.211/4045 dst
   inside:192.168.1.13/80 by access-group "Transit-ACL-Policy"
Feb 21 2007 00:15:13: %ASA-4-106023: Deny tcp src outside:192.168.2.199/8567 dst
   inside:192.168.1.140/80 by access-group "Transit-ACL-Policy"
Feb 21 2007 00:15:13: %ASA-4-106023: Deny tcp src outside:192.168.2.100/1809 dst
   inside:192.168.1.15/80 by access-group "Transit-ACL-Policy"
Feb 21 2007 00:15:13: %ASA-4-106023: Deny tcp src outside:192.168.4.188/6768 dst
   inside:192.168.1.138/443 by access-group "Transit-ACL-Policy"
Feb 21 2007 00:15:13: %ASA-4-106023: Deny tcp src outside:192.168.3.115/4876 dst
   inside:192.168.1.50/443 by access-group "Transit-ACL-Policy"
firewall#

In the preceding example, the messages logged for the tACL Transit-ACL-Policy show HTTP and HTTPS packets on TCP port 80 and 443 sent to the address block assigned to the network infrastructure.

Additional information about syslog messages for ASA and PIX security appliances is available in Cisco Security Appliance System Log Messages. Additional information about syslog messages for the FWSM is available in Catalyst 6500 Series Switch and Cisco 7600 Series Router Firewall Services Module Logging Configuration and System Log Messages.

Additional Information

THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDED ON AN "AS IS" BASIS AND DOES NOT IMPLY ANY KIND OF GUARANTEE OR WARRANTY, INCLUDING THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR USE. YOUR USE OF THE INFORMATION ON THE DOCUMENT OR MATERIALS LINKED FROM THE DOCUMENT IS AT YOUR OWN RISK. CISCO RESERVES THE RIGHT TO CHANGE OR UPDATE THIS DOCUMENT AT ANY TIME.

Revision History

Revision 1.1

2007-October-23

Include assigned CVE names

Revision 1.0

2007-October-17

Initial public release

Cisco Security Procedures

Complete information on reporting security vulnerabilities in Cisco products, obtaining assistance with security incidents, and registering to receive security information from Cisco, is available on Cisco's worldwide website at http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/products_security_vulnerability_policy.html. This includes instructions for press inquiries regarding Cisco security notices. All Cisco security advisories are available at http://www.cisco.com/go/psirt.

Related Information

Updated: Oct 23, 2007 Document ID: 99696