CVE-2023-20101: Critical Security Vulnerability in Cisco Emergency Responder Allows for Unauthenticated Root Access

A newly discovered vulnerability in Cisco Emergency Responder (CER) can potentially leave many organizations and their critical data at risk. This vulnerability, labeled CVE-2023-20101, allows an unauthenticated, remote attacker to gain root access to an affected device using static credentials. This practically gives the attacker total control over the device, enabling them to execute arbitrary commands as if they were a legitimate, high-level user.

What is Cisco Emergency Responder (CER)?
The Cisco Emergency Responder is a software solution designed to help organizations automatically route emergency calls to the appropriate Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) and provide real-time location information. The main goal of CER is to ensure a timely and accurate response during emergencies, ultimately saving lives.

Details of the Vulnerability

The vulnerability in question, CVE-2023-20101, is present due to the existence of static user credentials (username and password) hard-coded for the root account. The credentials, which cannot be changed or deleted, are usually reserved for development purposes. However, with this flaw, an attacker with knowledge of these credentials can exploit the system and gain root access to execute arbitrary commands, possibly causing significant damage to the organization's network and compromising sensitive data.

Code Snippet

Below is a simple code snippet that demonstrates how an attacker could potentially exploit this vulnerability:

import requests

# Replace with the target URL/IP address of the affected CER system
url = "https://<TARGET_URL_OR_IP>/";

# Default, static credentials for the root account
username = "root"
password = "<STATIC_PASSWORD>"

# Try logging in with the static credentials
response = requests.get(url, auth=(username, password))

if response.status_code == 200:
    print("Successfully logged in as root!")
else:
    print("Failed to log in as root.")

Exploitation Details

With knowledge of the static credentials, an attacker can remotely log in to the affected CER system as the root user and execute arbitrary commands. This can lead to a wide range of attacks such as:

Mitigation and Recommendations

Cisco has released a patch for the affected products, and organizations are highly recommended to apply the patch immediately. The patch is available through Cisco's official advisory page for CVE-2023-20101.

Conclusion

The discovery of this critical vulnerability in Cisco Emergency Responder serves as an important reminder that even widely deployed and trusted software can contain security flaws that pose significant threats to organizations. It is essential for every organization to prioritize and continuously improve upon their security practices to safeguard their digital assets and infrastructure.

[1]: https://tools.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/CVE-2023-20101
[2]: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/voice-unified-communications/emergency-responder/index.html
[3]: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2023-20101

Timeline

Published on: 10/04/2023 17:15:09 UTC
Last modified on: 10/06/2023 18:15:15 UTC