Cisco Unified Presence XMPP Denial of Service Vulnerability

The XML parser of Cisco Unified Presence contains a vulnerability that could allow an authenticated, remote attacker to trigger a crash of the jabberd process, causing a denial of service condition.

The vulnerability is due to insufficient validation of crafted XML in Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) messages. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending crafted XMPP messages to the affected system.

Cisco has confirmed the vulnerability in a security notice and software updates available.

To exploit this vulnerability, the attacker must be able to authenticate to a targeted system. This access restriction limits the possibility of a successful exploit.

Customers are advised to review the bug report in the Vendor Announcements section for a current list of affected versions.

Cisco indicates through the CVSS score that functional exploit code exists; however, the code is not known to be publicly available.