cisco IOS Software | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Since last week, a new hacking group, calling itself ' JHT ,' hijacked a significant number of Cisco devices belonging to organizations in Russia and Iran, and left a message that reads—" Do not mess with our elections " with an American flag (in ASCII art). MJ Azari Jahromi, Iranian Communication and Information Technology Minister, said the campaign impacted approximately 3,500 network switches in Iran, though a majority of them were already restored. The hacking group is reportedly targeting vulnerable installations of Cisco Smart Install Client, a legacy plug-and-play utility designed to help administrators configure and deploy Cisco equipments remotely, which is enabled by default on Cisco IOS and IOS XE switches and runs over TCP port 4786. Some researchers believe the attack involves a recently disclosed remote code execution vulnerability ( CVE-2018-0171 ) in Cisco Smart Install Client that could allow attackers to take full control of the network ...

Cisco is warning of a new critical zero-day IOS / IOS XE vulnerability that affects more than 300 of its switch models. The company identified this highest level of vulnerability in its product while analyzing " Vault 7 " — a roughly 8,761 documents and files leaked by Wikileaks last week, claiming to detail hacking tools and tactics of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The vulnerability resides in the Cluster Management Protocol (CMP) processing code in Cisco IOS and Cisco IOS XE Software. If exploited, the flaw ( CVE-2017-3881 ) could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to cause a reboot of an affected device or remotely execute malicious code on the device with elevated privileges to take full control of the device, Cisco says in its  advisory . The CMP protocol has been designed to pass around information about switch clusters between cluster members using Telnet or SSH. The vulnerability is in the default configuration of affected Cisco devices,...

Vulnerability Management (VM) has long been a cornerstone of organizational cybersecurity. Nearly as old as the discipline of cybersecurity itself, it aims to help organizations identify and address potential security issues before they become serious problems. Yet, in recent years, the limitations of this approach have become increasingly evident.  At its core, Vulnerability Management processes remain essential for identifying and addressing weaknesses. But as time marches on and attack avenues evolve, this approach is beginning to show its age. In a recent report, How to Grow Vulnerability Management into Exposure Management (Gartner, How to Grow Vulnerability Management Into Exposure Management, 8 November 2024, Mitchell Schneider Et Al.), we believe Gartner® addresses this point precisely and demonstrates how organizations can – and must – shift from a vulnerability-centric strategy to a broader Exposure Management (EM) framework. We feel it's more than a worthwhile read an...