Cisco Nexus 3000 and 9000 Series Switches IS-IS Protocol Denial of Service Vulnerability

A vulnerability in the Intermediate System-to-Intermediate System (IS-IS) protocol of Cisco NX-OS Software for the Cisco Nexus 3000 Series Switches and Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Switches in standalone NX-OS mode could allow an unauthenticated, adjacent attacker to cause the IS-IS process to unexpectedly restart, which could cause an affected device to reload.

This vulnerability is due to insufficient input validation when parsing an ingress IS-IS packet. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a crafted IS-IS packet to an affected device. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to cause a denial of service (DoS) condition due to the unexpected restart of the IS-IS process, which could cause the affected device to reload.

Note: The IS-IS protocol is a routing protocol. To exploit this vulnerability, an attacker must be Layer 2 adjacent to the affected device.

Cisco has released software updates that address this vulnerability. There are no workarounds that address this vulnerability.

This advisory is available at the following link:
https://sec.cloudapps.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-nxos-n3_9k-isis-dos-FTCXB4Vb [“https://sec.cloudapps.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-nxos-n3_9k-isis-dos-FTCXB4Vb”]

This advisory is part of the August 2023 Cisco FXOS and NX-OS Software Security Advisory Bundled Publication. For a complete list of the advisories and links to them, see Cisco Event Response: August 2023 Semiannual Cisco FXOS and NX-OS Software Security Advisory Bundled Publication [“https://sec.cloudapps.cisco.com/security/center/viewErp.x?alertId=ERP-75058”].