Lucian Constantin
CSO Senior Writer

Cisco patches serious flaws in cable modems and home gateways

news
Mar 10, 20162 mins

The vulnerabilities could lead to remote code execution, information disclosure or denial of service

Cisco Systems has patched high-impact vulnerabilities in several of its cable modem and residential gateway devices that are distributed by some ISPs to their customers.

The embedded Web server in the Cisco Cable Modem with Digital Voice models DPC2203 and EPC2203 contains a buffer overflow vulnerability that can be exploited remotely without authentication.

The flaw could be exploited by sending specially crafted HTTP requests to the Web server and could result in arbitrary code execution.

Customers should contact their service providers to ensure that the software version installed on their devices includes the patch for this issue, Cisco said in an advisory.

The Web-based administration interfaces of the Cisco DPC3941 Wireless Residential Gateway with Digital Voice and Cisco DPC3939B Wireless Residential Voice Gateway are affected by a vulnerability that could lead to information disclosure.

An unauthenticated, remote attacker could exploit the flaw by sending a specially crafted HTTP request to an affected device in order to obtain sensitive information from it.

The Cisco Model DPQ3925 8×4 DOCSIS 3.0 Wireless Residential Gateway with EDVA is affected by a separate vulnerability, also triggered by malicious HTTP requests, that could lead to a denial-of-service condition.

In recent years, attackers have increasingly targeted modems, routers and other gateway devices, especially those distributed by ISPs to their customers. By compromising such devices, attackers can snoop on, hijack or disrupt network traffic or can attack other devices inside local networks.

Lucian Constantin

Lucian Constantin writes about information security, privacy, and data protection for CSO. Before joining CSO in 2019, Lucian was a freelance writer for VICE Motherboard, Security Boulevard, Forbes, and The New Stack. Earlier in his career, he was an information security correspondent for the IDG News Service and Information security news editor for Softpedia.

Before he became a journalist, Lucian worked as a system and network administrator. He enjoys attending security conferences and delving into interesting research papers. He lives and works in Romania.

You can reach him at lucian_constantin@foundryco.com or @lconstantin on X. For encrypted email, his PGP key's fingerprint is: 7A66 4901 5CDA 844E 8C6D 04D5 2BB4 6332 FC52 6D42

More from this author