Cisco Warns Of Bugs In Unified Communications ManagerCisco Warns Of Bugs In Unified Communications Manager

Cisco Systems released two security bulletins to warn IT managers about vulnerabilities in its Unified Communications Manager.

In one advisory, Cisco noted the Unified Communications Manager, which used to be known as CallManager, contained two overflow vulnerabilities. The flaws, according to the company, could enable a remote, unauthenticated hacker to execute arbitrary and malicious code or cause a denial-of-service.

One of the bugs is a Certified Trust List (CTL) provider service overflow. The other bug is Real-Time Information Server (RIS) data collector heap overflow.

Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM) is a call processing component in Cisco's IP telephony solution.

The second advisory warns users of another two vulnerabilities that could allow an unauthorized administrator to activate and terminate CUCM and CUPS (Common Unix Printing System) services, and access SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) configuration information. "This may respectively result in a denial-of-service condition affecting CUCM/CUPS cluster systems and the disclosure of sensitive SNMP details, including community strings," noted the advisory.

Cisco warned that using sensitive information, like community strings, an attacker may be able to leverage access to sensitive information on other systems in the network. It is common practice in many enterprise environments to utilize standardized SNMP community strings. This, the advisory noted, could compound the severity of the vulnerability.

The denial-of-service could affect critical voice services. An attacker could disable central CUCM services, effectively causing the complete disruption of a CUCM cluster, the advisory added.

The US-CERT is recommending that IT administrators apply the updates. Its researchers will continue to investigate and provide additional information as it becomes available.

Cisco's security advisories came out the same week as Microsoft's monthly Patch Tuesday release. Apple also released QuickTime 7.2 this week, patching eight security holes, four of them in QuickTime for Java.