Cisco Systems has patched a critical flaw that even novice hackers could exploit using Central Intelligence Agency attack tools that were recently leaked to the Internet.
As previously reported, the zero-day exploit allowed attackers to issue commands that remotely execute malicious code on 318 models of Cisco switches. The attack code was published in early March by WikiLeaks as part of its Vault7 series of leaks, which the site is billing as the largest publication of intelligence documents ever.
The bug resides in the Cisco Cluster Management Protocol (CMP), which uses the telnet protocol to deliver signals and commands on internal networks. It stems from a failure to restrict telnet options to local communications and the incorrect processing of malformed CMP-only telnet options.
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