Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Fabric Switches in ACI Mode Link Layer Discovery Protocol Memory Leak Denial of Service Vulnerability

A vulnerability in the Link Layer Discovery Protocol (LLDP) feature for Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Fabric Switches in Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) Mode could allow an unauthenticated, adjacent attacker to cause a memory leak, which could result in an unexpected reload of the device.

This vulnerability is due to incorrect error checking when parsing ingress LLDP packets. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a steady stream of crafted LLDP packets to an affected device. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to cause a memory leak, which could result in a denial of service (DoS) condition when the device unexpectedly reloads.

Note: This vulnerability cannot be exploited by transit traffic through the device. The crafted LLDP packet must be targeted to a directly connected interface, and the attacker must be in the same broadcast domain as the affected device (Layer 2 adjacent). In addition, the attack surface for this vulnerability can be reduced by disabling LLDP on interfaces where it is not required.

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-aci-lldp-dos-ySCNZOpX [“https://sec.cloudapps.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-aci-lldp-dos-ySCNZOpX”]

This advisory is part of the February 2023 Cisco FXOS and NX-OS Software Security Advisory Bundled Publication. For a complete list of the advisories and links to them, see Cisco Event Response: February 2023 Semiannual Cisco FXOS and NX-OS Software Security Advisory Bundled Publication [“https://sec.cloudapps.cisco.com/security/center/viewErp.x?alertId=ERP-75057”].