Researchers identify vulnerabilities in Cisco Secure Boot process and Cisco IOS XE devices that could reportedly be chained together for significant impact.

Thrangrycat: Vulnerabilities in Cisco Secure Boot and Cisco IOS XE (CVE-2019-1649, CVE-2019-1862)

A vulnerability in the logic that handles access control to one of the hardware components in Cisco's proprietary Secure Boot implementation could allow an authenticated, local attacker to write a modified firmware image to the component. This vulnerability affects multiple Cisco products that support hardware-based Secure Boot functionality. The vulnerability is due to an improper check on the area of code that manages on-premise updates to a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) part of the Secure Boot hardware implementation. An attacker with elevated privileges and access to the underlying operating system that is running on the affected device could exploit this vulnerability by writing a modified firmware image to the FPGA. A successful exploit could either cause the device to become unusable (and require a hardware replacement) or allow tampering with the Secure Boot verification process, which under some circumstances may allow the attacker to install and boot a malicious software image. An attacker will need to fulfill all the following conditions to attempt to exploit this vulnerability: Have privileged administrative access to the device. Be able to access the underlying operating system running on the device; this can be achieved either by using a supported, documented mechanism or by exploiting another vulnerability that would provide an attacker with such access. Develop or have access to a platform-specific exploit. An attacker attempting to exploit this vulnerability across multiple affected platforms would need to research each one of those platforms and then develop a platform-specific exploit. Although the research process could be reused across different platforms, an exploit developed for a given hardware platform is unlikely to work on a different hardware platform.

A vulnerability in the logic that handles access control to one of the hardware components in Cisco's proprietary Secure Boot implementation could allow an authenticated, local attacker to write a modified firmware image to the component. This vulnerability affects multiple Cisco products that support hardware-based Secure Boot functionality.
The vulnerability is due to an improper check on the area of code that manages on-premise updates to a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) part of the Secure Boot hardware implementation. An attacker with elevated privileges and access to the underlying operating system that is running on the affected device could exploit this vulnerability by writing a modified firmware image to the FPGA. A successful exploit could either cause the device to become unusable (and require a hardware replacement) or allow tampering with the Secure Boot verification process, which under some circumstances may allow the attacker to install and boot a malicious software image. An attacker will need to fulfill all the following conditions to attempt to exploit this vulnerability: Have privileged administrative access to the device. Be able to access the underlying operating system running on the device; this can be achieved either by using a supported, documented mechanism or by exploiting another vulnerability that would provide an attacker with such access. Develop or have access to a platform-specific exploit. An attacker attempting to exploit this vulnerability across multiple affected platforms would need to research each one of those platforms and then develop a platform- specific exploit. Although the research process could be reused across different platforms, an exploit developed for a given hardware platform is unlikely to work on a different hardware platform.

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According to its version, the Cisco Firepower Threat Defense (FTD) software installed on the remote host is affected by a vulnerability in the logic that handles access control to one of the hardware components in Cisco's proprietary Secure Boot implementation could allow an authenticated, local attacker to write a modified firmware image to the component.
This vulnerability affects multiple Cisco products that support hardware-based Secure Boot functionality. The vulnerability is due to an improper check on the area of code that manages on-premise updates to a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) part of the Secure Boot hardware implementation. An attacker with elevated privileges and access to the underlying operating system that is running on the affected device could exploit this vulnerability by writing a modified firmware image to the FPGA. A successful exploit could either cause the device to become unusable (and require a hardware replacement) or allow tampering with the Secure Boot verification process, which under some circumstances may allow the attacker to install and boot a malicious software image.

Please see the included Cisco BIDs and Cisco Security Advisory for more information

ID	Name	Product	Family	Severity
501264	Rockwell Automation Allen-Bradley Stratix 5950 Improper Access Control (CVE-2019-1649)	Tenable OT Security	Tenable.ot	medium
125341	Cisco Firepower Threat Defense (FTD) Secure Boot Hardware Tampering Vulnerability (cisco-sa-20190513-secureboot)	Nessus	CISCO	medium

Detections

Analytics

CVE-2019-1649

medium

Tenable Plugins

medium

medium