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Cisco warns of flaws that could disrupt voice calls

Problems in its unified communications software could allow a denial of service attack.

By Asavin Wattanajantra, 28 Aug 2009 at 11:54

Cisco has warned customers about faults in its unified communications software, which could allow for a denial of service (DoS) attack and the disruption of voice services.

A security alert said that there were faults in Cisco’s unified communications manager, a call processing system that extends "enterprise telephony features" to network devices such as IP phones.

Two DoS vulnerabilities are around the processing of SIP packets. The vulnerabilities can be triggered by a malformed SIP message and cause a 'critical" process to fail, disrupting voice services.

Other DoS vulnerabilities include an issue with the tracking of network connections, and two others involving the processing of SIP and SCCP packets.

Cisco said it was not yet aware of any attacks trying to take advantage of flaws found in the advisory.

The alert was published a day after Cisco warned about problems with its Wireless LAN devices, which leave it open to a DoS attack.

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For those affected....

Cisco said that the flaw affects UCM editions 4, 5, 6 and 7. The Express edition is not believed to be vulnerable.

The company has released patches for the 6.x and 7.x versions, and a fix for versions 5.x is scheduled for early September. Administrators are advised to install the updates immediately.

The risk of attack can also be mitigated by filtering access to the vulnerable TCP 2000 and 2443 ports and the UDP 5060 and 5061 ports.

By jwarnette on Friday Aug 28

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