Actively exploited vulnerability
Cisco IOS XR: denial of service flaw under attack
CVE-2010-3035 · Cisco IOS XR Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) Denial-of-Service Vulnerability
What is affected
Cisco IOS XR is found on ordinary personal computers and phones, so this is not only a problem for companies. If you use it and have not updated since the fix was released, you are exposed.
Cisco IOS XR, when BGP is the configured routing feature, allows remote attackers to cause a denial-of-service (DoS).
What an attacker can do
This is a denial of service flaw. It lets an attacker crash the product or make it unavailable to the people who rely on it.
- How it is reached
- Over the internet or network
- Access the attacker needs
- No account needed
- Does the victim have to do something?
- No, works without the victim doing anything
What to do
- Update Cisco IOS XR now. Open the update or "About" screen, install whatever is offered and restart the app or device, because the fix is not active until you do.
- Turn on automatic updates so the next fix arrives without you having to look for it.
- If your device is too old to receive this update, stop using the affected app for anything sensitive and plan a replacement.
Apply updates per vendor instructions.
How urgent is it
CISA added this vulnerability to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalogue on March 25, 2022, which means there is reliable evidence of attacks in the wild. US federal agencies must fix it by April 15, 2022, a deadline that has already passed. That deadline does not bind anyone else, but it shows how seriously the agency rates it.
The EPSS model estimates a 5.7% probability that this flaw will be exploited somewhere in the next 30 days. That is higher than 93% of all scored vulnerabilities.
Its CVSS severity score is 7.5 out of 10 (high), as recorded in the US National Vulnerability Database.
Technical description
Cisco IOS XR 3.4.0 through 3.9.1, when BGP is enabled, does not properly handle unrecognized transitive attributes, which allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (peering reset) via a crafted prefix announcement, as demonstrated in the wild in August 2010 with attribute type code 99, aka Bug ID CSCti62211.