Denial of Service Vulnerability in Cisco Nexus 3000 and 9000 Series Switches

CVE-2023-20169

Summary

A vulnerability in the Intermediate System-to-Intermediate System (IS-IS) protocol of Cisco NX-OS Software used by Cisco Nexus 3000 and 9000 Series Switches allows an unauthenticated, adjacent attacker to disrupt the IS-IS process. This vulnerability stems from insufficient input validation when processing incoming IS-IS packets. By sending specially crafted packets to an affected device, an attacker can force the IS-IS process to restart unexpectedly, leading to a potential denial of service condition and a complete reload of the affected device. Attackers must be Layer 2 adjacent to exploit this flaw, highlighting the importance of network segmentation and vigilant access control.

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