Cisco Intersight Virtual Appliance Privilege Escalation Vulnerability

A vulnerability exists in the read-only maintenance shell of Cisco Intersight Virtual Appliance, affecting both Connected Virtual Appliance (CVA) and Private Virtual Appliance (PVA) versions 1.1.4. The issue allows an authenticated, local attacker with administrative privileges to elevate privileges to root on the virtual appliance. This vulnerability arises from improper file permissions on configuration files for system accounts within the maintenance shell. An attacker could exploit this by accessing the maintenance shell as a read-only administrator and manipulating system files to gain root privileges. Successfully exploiting this vulnerability could lead to full control of the virtual appliance, allowing access to sensitive information, modification of workloads and configurations on the host system, and causing a denial-of-service condition.

Impact

Exploitation of this vulnerability could allow an attacker to gain root privileges on the virtual appliance, leading to full control over the appliance. This access could be used to access sensitive information, modify workloads and configurations on the host system, and cause a denial-of-service condition.

Remediation

Users running Cisco Intersight CVA will be upgraded automatically. Those using Cisco Intersight PVA should visit the Cisco Intersight website to upgrade to the fixed release.