Vulnerability in Cisco Devices VPN Functionality

A few weeks ago a vulnerability was publicized in the VPN functionality of Cisco PIX firewalls, along with a tool to exploit it. This exploit was part of the Shadow Brokers dump of tools allegedly stolen from the NSA; in this case it was the BENIGNCERTAIN tool. This exploit was viewed as being of limited impact, since Cisco discontinued support for the PIX firewall years ago in favor or their newer ASA firewall line.

This weekend it was announced that the same vulnerability exists in the IOS software that powers the vast majority of Cisco devices. This means that Cisco routers and routing switches with VPN functionality can be exploited with the BENIGNCERTAIN tool as well, rendering their VPN sessions subject to snooping. The vulnerability affects all versions of IOS going back to 12.2, as well as most versions IOS XR and IOS XE.

Cisco has not yet released updated software to fix this issue, and they say there are no work-arounds; they have, however, published intrusion detection/prevention signatures to catch exploit attempts. It should be noted that Cisco says only VPNs using IKE v1 are vulnerable -- IKE v2 is not vulnerable. Organizations have the option of disabling support for IKE v1, or of disabling VPN functionality altogether, until Cisco releases a software fix.

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