CVE-2024-20439 Scanner

The Cisco Smart Licensing Utility is utilized by various organizations to manage and monitor software licenses across their networked devices. It is a critical application for ensuring compliance and efficient license management, often employed by IT departments and network administrators. The utility provides a centralized interface for license activation, allocation, and auditing, facilitating streamlined processes in complex environments. Cisco’s comprehensive approach makes this utility vital for reducing administrative overhead and improving accuracy in large-scale deployments. The utility is integral in environments demanding high levels of control over software assets.

The vulnerability pertains to the use of a hard-coded administrative credential in the Cisco Smart Licensing Utility. It poses a significant risk as it allows unauthorized access to the application interface by exploiting static credentials. Such vulnerabilities could potentially compromise the entire system, offering access to sensitive license management functions. The vulnerability exists due to undocumented, embedded user credentials, elevating the threat level due to its simplicity of exploitation. This class of vulnerability severely impacts confidentiality, integrity, and availability through unauthorized administrative access.

The technical specifics of this vulnerability involve the use of a static username-password combination embedded within the application code. When an attacker leverages these credentials, they gain administrative access over the API of the Cisco Smart Licensing Utility. The vulnerability is directly linked to the 'scheduler/jobs' endpoint, accessible via HTTP requests. The application's failure to dynamically manage administrative credentials enables this security flaw. The endpoint provides outputs that confirm successful login, which might include sensitive operational data about license jobs and their statuses.

Exploitation could lead to unauthorized administrative operations, including the manipulation or deletion of license jobs, potentially disrupting business operations. Attackers may gain the ability to affect the system’s integrity, accessing or altering critical license data. Additionally, continuous unauthorized access could compromise security posture, resulting in potential data leaks or further escalation of privileges. Such a vulnerability heightens risk exposure, necessitating immediate mitigation efforts to preserve system functionality and protection integrity.

REFERENCES

• https://sec.cloudapps.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-cslu-7gHMzWmw
• https://github.com/fkie-cad/nvd-json-data-feeds