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Cisco Fixes Three-Year-Old Telnet Flaw In Security Appliances
Trailrunner7 writes "There is a severe remote code execution vulnerability in a number of Cisco's security appliances, a bug that was first disclosed nearly three years ago. The vulnerability is in Telnet and there has been a Metasploit module available to exploit it for years. The FreeBSD Project first disclosed the vulnerability in telnet in December 2011 and it was widely publicized at the time. Recently, Glafkos Charalambous, a security researcher, discovered that the bug was still present in several of Cisco's security boxes, including the Web Security Appliance, Email Security Appliance and Content Security Management Appliance. The vulnerability is in the AsyncOS software in those appliances and affects all versions of the products." At long last, though, as the article points out, "Cisco has released a patched version of the AsyncOS software to address the vulnerability and also has recommended some workarounds for customers."
I use telnet plenty great for connecting to a tcp port and debugging. It's a horrid thing to run as a service and allow people to login etc.
No sir I dont like it.
When I worked at Cisco for nine months as a contractor last year, everyone used telnet to access network devices under development. My boss explained to me that 1) these were default passwords that everyone on the team knew, and 2) the development VLAN is secured from outsiders. That makes sense on one level, but using telnet is a bad habit one shouldn't get into.