Vulnerability Note VU#721092

Cisco IBM Director agent does not properly handle arbitrary TCP packets to port 14247/tcp

Overview

Cisco IBM Director agent does not properly handle arbitrary TCP packets to port 14247/tcp.

I. Description

Cisco voice products (e.g. CallManager, IP Interactive Voice Response, IP Call Center Express) that run on IBM servers install IBM Director agent to provide administrative management. There is a flaw in the way the IBM Director agent (twgipc.exe) handles arbitrary TCP packets to port 14247/tcp. A remote attacker could cause a denial-of-service condition by sending arbitrary TCP packets to the IBM Director agent on port 14247/tcp. This vulnerability could be exploited by port scanning an affected system.

II. Impact

A remote attacker could cause the IBM Director Agent to consume 100% of the CPU until the server is rebooted.

III. Solution

Upgrade

Quoting from Cisco's Advisory:

As the mitigation for the vulnerabilities is a repair script, a software upgrade is not required to address the vulnerabilities. However, if you have a service contract, and wish to upgrade to unaffected code, you may obtain upgraded software through your regular update channels once that software is available. For most customers, this means that upgrades should be obtained through the Software Center on Cisco's Worldwide Web site at

http://www.cisco.com

Apply Cisco Repair Script

Cisco has provided a repair script as a workaround until an upgrade is available. The repair script is available from:

http://www.cisco.com/cgi-bin/tablebuild.pl/cmva-3des

Quoting from Cisco's Advisory:

Cisco's repair script adds 3 levels of improved security to the Director agent:

1. The Director agent no longer listens on TCP or UDP ports 14247 for remote connections from a Director Server. This change prevents the Denial of Service attacks described in the Impact section.

2. The repair script secures the Director agent such that even if port 14247 is reenabled, the Director agent still would not accept connections from any Director Server.

Please note that applying this repair script may cause adverse affects on production systems. For information, please refer to the Cisco Advisory.

Systems Affected

Vendor	Status	Date Notified	Date Updated
Cisco Systems Inc.	Vulnerable	22-Jan-2004

References

http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/707/cisco-sa-20040121-voice.shtml
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/products_security_advisory09186a00801ede01.shtml
http://www.secunia.com/advisories/10696/

Credit

This was reported by the Cisco Systems Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT).

This document was written by Damon Morda.

Other Information

Date Public:	2004-01-21
Date First Published:	2004-01-22
Date Last Updated:	2004-01-23
CERT Advisory:
CVE-ID(s):
NVD-ID(s):
US-CERT Technical Alerts:
Metric:	3.87
Document Revision:	24

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