Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Fabric Switches in ACI Mode Link Layer Discovery Protocol Memory Leak Denial of Service Vulnerability

CVE-2023-20089

Summary

A vulnerability exists in the Link Layer Discovery Protocol (LLDP) feature for Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Fabric Switches operating in Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) Mode. This flaw could be exploited by an adjacent attacker to induce a memory leak that unexpectedly reloads the device. The vulnerability stems from inadequate error checking when parsing LLDP packets. To exploit this, an attacker must send crafted LLDP packets directly to an affected device in the same broadcast domain. Although this could create a denial of service condition, the risk can be mitigated by disabling LLDP on non-essential interfaces.

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