Cisco IOS and IOS XE Software Short Message Service Denial of Service Vulnerability

A vulnerability in the implementation of the Short Message Service (SMS) handling functionality of Cisco IOS Software and Cisco IOS XE Software could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to trigger a denial of service (DoS) condition on an affected device.

The vulnerability is due to improper processing of SMS protocol data units (PDUs) that are encoded with a special character set. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a malicious SMS message to an affected device. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to cause the wireless WAN (WWAN) cellular interface module on an affected device to crash, resulting in a DoS condition that would require manual intervention to restore normal operating conditions.

Cisco has released software updates that address this vulnerability. There are no workarounds that address this vulnerability.

This advisory is available at the following link:
https://sec.cloudapps.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-20190327-sms-dos [“https://sec.cloudapps.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-20190327-sms-dos”]

This advisory is part of the March 27, 2019, release of the Cisco IOS and IOS XE Software Security Advisory Bundled Publication, which includes 17 Cisco Security Advisories that describe 19 vulnerabilities. For a complete list of the advisories and links to them, see Cisco Event Response: March 2019 Semiannual Cisco IOS and IOS XE Software Security Advisory Bundled Publication [“https://sec.cloudapps.cisco.com/security/center/viewErp.x?alertId=ERP-71135”].