June 19, 2006
Cisco Call Manager Flaw Could Invite Hackers
Vulnerabilities in Cisco's Call Manager software could open the door for hackers to reconfigure VoIP settings and gain access to individual users' account information, according to researchers at Kansas City, Mo.-based solution provider FishNet Security.
Vulnerabilities in Cisco's Call Manager software could open the door for hackers to reconfigure
VoIP settings and gain access to individual users' account information, according to researchers at Kansas City, Mo.-based solution provider FishNet Security.
In a report issued Monday, Jake Reynolds, senior security engineer at FishNet, said the vulnerability affects versions 3.1 and higher of Call Manager, which handles call routing and call signaling functions in Cisco VoIP systems. A lack of input validation and output encoding in the Web administration interface for Call Manager could allow hackers to execute cross-site scripting attacks, Reynolds wrote.
Cross site scripting attacks usually involve tricking users with access privileges into clicking on a URL in an email or Web page.
In the Call Manager scenario, attackers would send a request to the Call Manager Web interface that causes malicious JavaScript to be included. If the administrator could be tricked into submitting this tainted request, the malicious code would execute in the victim's Web browser and potentially give attackers the ability to delete or reconfigure system components and gain access to confidential user information, according to the report.
In a statement, Cisco's Product Security Incident Response Team (PSRIT) recommended that users verify link destinations before clicking on URLs.
Although there are no workarounds for the issue, Cisco has fixed the vulnerability and fixes will be incorporated in all supported CallManager trains in versions 4.3(1), 4.2(3), 4.1(3)SR4 and 3.3(5)SR3, according to the statement.
To guard against attacks, FishNet recommends that companies limit network connectivity to Call Manager wherever possible to prevent hackers from discovering public Web interfaces.
"Simple Google queries are all an attacker needs in this case to obtain the target Call Manager address. There are few compelling reasons one could present that would justify public access to Call Manager web interfaces," according to the report.
