Cisco ships critical fix for IP phones

Cisco has published software fixes for multiple versions of firmware running on some of its IP phones.

The company’s advisory covers two vulnerabilities affecting six products.

The first vulnerability is CVE-2023-20078 (CVSS score 9.8) and impacts the 6800 series, 7800 series, and 8800 series phones running the company’s multiplatform firmware.

Insufficient validation of user-supplied input allows an attacker to send a crafted request to the phone’s web-based management interface.

A successful exploit lets an unauthenticated remote attacker execute arbitrary operating system commands, with root privilege.

CVE-2023-20079 (CVSS score 7.5) affects the same phones, as well as the United IP conference phone 7900 series, 8831 series, and 8831 with multiplatform firmware.

It also depends on insufficient input validation in the web-based management interface, which allows an unauthenticated remote attacker to force a device reload, leading to denial-of-service.

The vulnerabilities affect multiplatform firmware versions prior to 11.3.7SR1.

However, the affected United IP conference phones are already end-of-life, and won’t be patched.

The vulnerabilities were discovered during internal security testing.