Cisco Releases 10 Security Patches For Expressway Series and TelePresence VCS Products

Cisco has rolled out patches for security flaws across multiple versions of its products.

The company disclosed the patches in an advisory on Wednesday, describing two vulnerabilities, one of which rated Critical in severity.

“A vulnerability in the cluster database API of Cisco Expressway Series and Cisco TelePresence VCS could allow an authenticated, remote attacker with Administrator read-write privileges on the application to conduct absolute path traversal attacks on an affected device and overwrite files on the underlying operating system as a root user,” read the advisory.

Cisco clarified these vulnerabilities affect Cisco Expressway Series software and Cisco TelePresence VCS software if they are in the default configuration.

Tracked under CVE-2022-20812, the first of these two vulnerabilities has a CVSS Base Score of 9.0 and is reportedly due to insufficient input validation of user-supplied command arguments. 

“An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by authenticating to the system as an administrative read-write user and submitting crafted input to the affected command.”

A successful exploit could then allow the attacker to overwrite arbitrary files on the underlying operating system as the root user.

Cisco also addressed the Expressway Series and Cisco TelePresence VCS Null Byte Poisoning Vulnerability (CVE-2022-20813), which has a CVSS Base Score of 7.4.

A vulnerability in the certificate validation of the Cisco Expressway Series and Cisco TelePresence VCS, this flaw could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to gain unauthorized access to sensitive data.

“This vulnerability is due to improper certificate validation. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by using a man-in-the-middle technique to intercept the traffic between devices and then using a crafted certificate to impersonate the endpoint,” Cisco wrote.

“A successful exploit could allow the attacker to view the intercepted traffic in clear text or alter the contents of the traffic.”

The company also said that the released software updates address both vulnerabilities, and system admins should upgrade as soon as possible as there are no workarounds that can be used to address the flaws.