Severe Vulnerabilities in Cisco — Some Unpatchable

There are severe new vulnerabilities in CISCO switches that enable remote code execution on the affected devices.

These vulnerabilities have been given extremely high severity ratings with CVSS base scores of 9.8/10. Successful exploitation enables unauthenticated attackers to execute arbitrary code with root privileges on compromised devices.

The vulnerabilities (CVE-2023-20159, CVE-2023-20160, CVE-2023-20161, and CVE-2023-20189) are caused by improper validation of requests sent to the targeted switches’ web interfaces. Attackers can exploit these vulnerabilities by sending specially crafted requests through the devices’ web-based user interfaces.

Cisco has released patches for some software versions, but not all devices can be patched. End-of-life devices remain vulnerable. The following end-of-life series of switches DO NOT have patches and remain vulnerable:

• Small Business 200 Series Smart Switches

• Small Business 300 Series Managed Switches

• Small Business 500 Series Stackable Managed Switches

The availability of proof-of-concept exploit code for these vulnerabilities significantly raises the concern of motivated threat actors developing their own exploits to target vulnerable devices.

Acreto Solution

Even if the CISCO switches have entered the end-of-life process and are no longer receiving patches from the manufacturer, Acreto’s security measures can still be applied to protect CISCO devices.

• By isolating the vulnerable devices’ management interface within an Ecosystem, Acreto effectively limits access to only those systems that need to interoperate, preventing unauthorized access and reducing the risk of exploitation.

• The micro-segmentation and nano-segmentation capabilities offered by Acreto enable the isolation of individual devices or groups of devices on shared networks, further enhancing security. With isolated data flows, organizations can define specific communication paths and access controls, ensuring that interactions with vulnerable devices are restricted to authorized sources and destinations.

• Acreto’s Encrypted Secure Scan provides inline decryption, scanning, and re-encryption of communications, even for encrypted traffic. This ensures that any malicious content embedded in the encrypted payload is blocked, safeguarding vulnerable devices against potential attacks.

• By implementing access controls based on user identity, device identity, network protocols, ports, and application protocols, Acreto enables organizations to maintain granular control over communication flows involving the end-of-life CISCO switches. This helps to prevent unauthorized code execution and unauthorized access to these devices.

Acreto’s comprehensive security solution through Ecosystems can provide robust protection for both patched and unpatched CISCO devices, allowing organizations to mitigate the risks associated with vulnerabilities in CISCO Series Switches that have reached the end-of-life processes.

Contact Acreto today for more information or to evaluate Ecosystem security for your organization.

Ecosystem Security Isolation

Ecosystems deliver a dedicated security infrastructure that can be deployed per application, use-case, project or third-party. An Ecosystem inherently limits access only to users, devices, systems and applications that need to interoperate together.

Ecosystems support any technology, on any network, anywhere in the world. These include computers, mobile devices, IoTs, Offices, Clouds, SaaS and Data Centers.

Ecosystems can be configured as:

Eliminate the Internet Attack Surface

Eliminates any and all access from the Internet while Ecosystem members can interoperate with authorized systems and applications.

Eliminate the Internal Attack Surface

Ecosystems can easily isolate individual or groups of systems on a shared network or entire networks, to limit access only to systems that need to interoperate together. This is done with

• Micro-Segmentation Segmenting groups of systems on any shared network, including hostile networks or the entire network.

• Nano-Segmentation Isolating an individual system, device or application to limit access only to other authorized Ecosystem members.

Isolated Data Flows

Isolated data flows can be defined between two Ecosystem members to limit access to specified sources and destinations, network protocols and ports, application protocols as well as application programs.

Encrypted Secure Scan

Secure Scan addresses a key weakness in many security tools today. 90%+ of all communications is encrypted, yet only 10% of organizations have the means to secure these communications. Encrypted Secure Scan decrypts, scans, and re-encrypts communications inline and in real-time.

Any malicious content embedded in the encrypted payload is blocked, otherwise the clean and validated communication is delivered to its final destination.

Controls

• User Authorizes access to the Ecosystem by a user’s identity, including MFA, as authenticated by the organizations’ Directory Services such as Active Directory or LDAP, as well as third-party Identity Service Providers such as Okta, Ping, Duo, and CloudJump among others.

• Device Specifies a unique identity to each device to validate that a specified device that does not rely on a user to operate – such as an autonomous application or IoT, is allowed to join the Ecosystem.

• Credit Cards Upload / Download Controls

• Social Security Number Upload / Download Controls

• RegEx Pattern Upload / Download Controls

Threat Prevention

After verification of network protocol, port, application protocol and application program, a deep inspection is performed on all communications. The effectiveness of this method is amplified by inline Encrypted Secure Scan. Threat prevention capabilities utilize two key methods:

Simplicity

Acreto Ecosystems are very easy to provision and deploy. There are no hardware dependencies or associated logistics.

Provisioning an Ecosystem takes 3-5 minutes. Simply provide a unique name to the Ecosystem then choose the bandwidth desired and within a few minutes your Ecosystem providing a dedicated security infrastructure is ready.

Depending on your connection options for Ecosystem members, deployment can take between 10 minutes to a few hours.

Sustainability

Acreto Ecosystems utilize a sustainable model without any dependency on products and their associated logistics. There are no more updates, upgrades or technology refreshes.

Change Management

Different Ecosystems operate completely independently from one-another. Therefore, change management impacts only members of a specified Ecosystem, not the entire organization. This simplifies the traditionally complex change management process.

Policy Management

Policy management also benefits from Ecosystems. Because Ecosystems are specific to a customer scenario such as an application, use-case, project or third-party, all policies apply to the scenario. Moreover, when its time for policy cleanup, when an application or use-case is retired, disabling or deleting the Ecosystem automatically prunes the policies. This has traditionally been a complex task that is at best inaccurate.

About Acreto

Acreto delivers full-stack cybersecurity without products, logistics or significant security expertise. It creates and consolidates the best of cybersecurity into a single plug-and-play platform with automated updates to stay ahead of threats. Acreto activates enterprise-grade security instantly, so organizations can run safely, easily, and without interruption.