Cisco Nexus Dashboard Flaw Let Remote Attacker Execute Arbitrary Commands

The Cisco Nexus Dashboard data center management solution was found to have severe vulnerabilities that Cisco has addressed recently. The total number of vulnerabilities identified was 45, which affected a wide variety of products and services.

A remote attacker can exploit these vulnerabilities to execute commands or perform actions with root privileges or Administrator permissions under the control of a system remotely.

Among the 45 vulnerabilities, the cybersecurity experts have marked them with three tags and here below we have mentioned:-

  • One flaw is rated as “Critical” in severity
  • Three flaws are rated as “High” in severity
  • Rest 41 flaws are rated as “Medium” in severity

Flaws affecting Cisco Nexus Dashboard

In terms of severity, the three most severe vulnerabilities are as follows:- 

Data centers and cloud network infrastructures are affected by these flaws in Cisco Nexus Dashboard. This could enable an unauthenticated remote attacker to perform the following illicit activities:-

  • Execute arbitrary commands
  • Read or upload container image files
  • Perform a cross-site request forgery attack

Flaw Profile

  • CVE ID: CVE-2022-20857
  • Summary: Cisco Nexus Dashboard Arbitrary Command Execution Vulnerability
  • Cisco Bug ID: CSCwa93560
  • Advisory ID: cisco-sa-ndb-mhcvuln-vpsBPJ9y
  • Security Impact Rating (SIR): Critical
  • CVSS Base Score: 9.8
  • Workarounds: Workarounds are not available.
  • CVE ID: CVE-2022-20861
  • Summary: Cisco Nexus Dashboard Cross-Site Request Forgery Vulnerability
  • Cisco Bug ID: CSCwa75451
  • Advisory ID: cisco-sa-ndb-mhcvuln-vpsBPJ9y
  • Security Impact Rating (SIR): High
  • CVSS Base Score: 8.8
  • Workarounds: Workarounds are not available.
  • CVE ID: CVE-2022-20858
  • Summary: Cisco Nexus Dashboard Container Image Read and Write Vulnerability
  • Cisco Bug ID: CSCwb24518
  • Advisory ID: cisco-sa-ndb-mhcvuln-vpsBPJ9y
  • Security Impact Rating (SIR): High
  • CVSS Base Score: 8.2
  • Workarounds: Workarounds are not available.

The Cisco Nexus Dashboard 1.1 version and subsequent versions are affected by the three vulnerabilities that were discovered during the ongoing internal security testing of Cisco Nexus Dashboards. Dashboard version 2.2(1e) has been released with fixes and improvements for the issues that have been reported.

No exploitation has been reported

It would be possible for the malicious images to be executed whenever a device or pod was rebooted or restarted. During internal security testing conducted by Cisco’s ASIG, security researchers found these vulnerabilities and reported them.

In response to a question from the PSIRT of Cisco, the company has confirmed that it is not aware of any exploits in the wild that are publicly available. 

It is possible that the attacker may also be able to view sensitive information if the exploit is successful, such as the administrator credentials for the affected controllers.

Cyber Securityvulnerability