Product:
Cisco Catalyst 6800 Series Switches
Summary
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 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.
Details
| Severity | Base Score | CVE |
|---|---|---|
| MEDIUM | 6.5 | CVE-2017-12238 |
Exploitation
To exploit this vulnerability, an attacker must be on the same local network as the target device. The attacker can create a large number of VPLS-generated MAC entries, which will fill the MAC address table of the affected device. Once the table is full, the device may crash, leading to a denial of service condition.
Affected Products
- C6800-16P10G: A line card that may crash due to the vulnerability when configured with VPLS.
- C6800-16P10G-XL: Another line card affected by the same vulnerability, also leading to potential DoS conditions.
Mitigation
To mitigate this vulnerability, users should apply updates as per the vendor’s instructions to ensure their devices are running secure versions of the software.