Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller SSH Privilege Escalation Vulnerability

A vulnerability in Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC) could allow an authenticated, remote attacker to gain higher privileges than the account is assigned. The attacker will be granted the privileges of the last user to log in, regardless of whether those privileges are higher or lower than what should have been granted. The attacker cannot gain root-level privileges.

The vulnerability is due to a limitation with how Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) grants privileges to remotely authenticated users when login occurs via SSH directly to the local management interface of the APIC. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by authenticating to the targeted device. The attacker’s privilege level will be modified to match that of the last user to log in via SSH. An exploit could allow the attacker to gain elevated privileges and perform CLI commands that should be restricted by the attacker’s configured role.

Cisco has released software updates that address this vulnerability. There are workarounds that address this vulnerability.

This advisory is available at the following link:
https://sec.cloudapps.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-20170816-apic1 [“https://sec.cloudapps.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-20170816-apic1”]