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Cisco CS-MARS Undocumented Root Account Vulnerability
Secunia Advisory: SA18424
Release Date: 2006-01-12
Last Update: 2006-08-04
Popularity: 6,252 views

Critical:
Less critical
Impact: Privilege escalation
Where: Local system
Solution Status: Vendor Patch

OS:Cisco Security Monitoring, Analysis and Response System (CS-MARS) 4.x

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CVE reference:CVE-2006-0181


Description:
A vulnerability has been reported in Cisco Security Monitoring, Analysis and Response System (CS-MARS), which can be exploited by malicious, local users to gain escalated privileges.

The vulnerability is caused due to CS-MARS appliances being shipped with a default password for an undocumented administrative root account that is intended for debugging purposes. This can be exploited by malicious users to gain root privileges using the undocumented "expert" command. The password for the account reportedly cannot be changed.

Successful exploitation requires logon to the administration command line interface with e.g. the "pnadmin" account.

The vulnerability has been reported in versions prior to 4.1.3.

Solution:
Update to version 4.1.3 or later and use the "passwd expert" command to change the root password.
http://www.cisco.com/pcgi-bin/tablebuild.pl/cs-mars?psrtdcat20e2

Provided and/or discovered by:
Reported by vendor.

Changelog:
2006-08-04: Added CVE reference.

Original Advisory:
http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/707/cisco-sa-20060111-mars.shtml


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