Hundreds of Cisco Switches Vulnerable To Flaw Found in WikiLeaks Files (zdnet.com)

Zack Whittaker, writing for ZDNet: Cisco is warning that the software used in hundreds of its products are vulnerable to a "critical"-rated security flaw, which can be easily and remotely exploited with a simple command. The vulnerability can allow an attacker to remotely gain access and take over an affected device. More than 300 switches are affected by the vulnerability, Cisco said in an advisory. According to the advisory, the bug is found in the cluster management protocol code in Cisco's IOS and IOS XE software, which the company installs on the routers and switches it sells. An attacker can exploit the vulnerability by sending a malformed protocol-specific Telnet command while establishing a connection to the affected device, because of a flaw in how the protocol fails to properly process some commands. Cisco said that there are "no workarounds" to address the vulnerability, but it said that disabling Telnet would "eliminate" some risks.

Comments

Re:That's nice, but...

[acoustix]

That means someone would have to be dumb enough to
1) Have the mgmt of the switch be publicly available
2) Have Telnet enabled.

3) Purchase from a vendor that does not understand security well enough to disable telnet.

Telnet is not enabled by default on any interface on Cisco switches. I've been using them since 1999 and I can't think of a time when an out-of-the-box switch had Telnet enabled.