Cisco ASR 5000 System Architecture Evolution Gateway High CPU Utilization Vulnerability

A vulnerability in the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) code of Cisco ASR 5500 System Architecture Evolution (SAE) Gateway could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to cause high CPU utilization and the SNMP process may stop responding.

The vulnerability is due to insufficient validation of malformed SNMP packets. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending malformed SNMP packets to the affected system.

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

To exploit this vulnerability, an attacker may need access to trusted, internal networks to send malformed SNMP packets to the targeted device. This access requirement may reduce the likelihood of a successful exploit.

Cisco indicates through the CVSS score that functional exploit code exists; however, the code is not known to be publicly available.