Cisco Nexus 1000V VSM/VEM Communication Encryption Bypass Vulnerability

Cryptographic issues in the Cisco Nexus 1000v could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to to inject traffic or eavesdrop on the communications between a Virtual Supervisor Module (VSM) and a Virtual Ethernet Module (VEM).

The issues are due to errors in the implementation of the cryptography employed for VSM to VEM communications. An attacker must have access to the Layer 2 management VLAN or the Layer 3 management traffic to exploit these issues.

Cisco would like to thank Felix ‘FX’ Lindner, Recurity Labs GmbH, for reporting this issue to us.

Cisco has confirmed the issue in a security notice; however, software updates are not available.

To exploit this issue, the attacker would likely need access to a trusted, internal network in which the targeted device may reside. This access restriction limits the possibility of a successful exploit.

Customers are advised to review the bug reports in the “Vendor Announcements” section for a current list of affected versions.