TITLE:
Cisco CS-MARS Undocumented Root Account Vulnerability

SECUNIA ADVISORY ID:
SA18424

VERIFY ADVISORY:
https://secunia.com/advisories/18424/

CRITICAL:
Less critical

IMPACT:
Privilege escalation

WHERE:
Local system

OPERATING SYSTEM:
Cisco Security Monitoring, Analysis and Response System (CS-MARS) 4.x
https://secunia.com/product/6780/

DESCRIPTION:
A vulnerability has been reported in Cisco Security Monitoring,
Analysis and Response System (CS-MARS), which can be exploited by
malicious, local users to gain escalated privileges.

The vulnerability is caused due to CS-MARS appliances being shipped
with a default password for an undocumented administrative root
account that is intended for debugging purposes. This can be
exploited by malicious users to gain root privileges using the
undocumented "expert" command. The password for the account
reportedly cannot be changed.

Successful exploitation requires logon to the administration command
line interface with e.g. the "pnadmin" account.

The vulnerability has been reported in versions prior to 4.1.3.

SOLUTION:
Update to version 4.1.3 or later and use the "passwd expert" command
to change the root password.
https://www.cisco.com/pcgi-bin/tablebuild.pl/cs-mars?psrtdcat20e2

PROVIDED AND/OR DISCOVERED BY:
Reported by vendor.

ORIGINAL ADVISORY:
https://www.cisco.com/warp/public/707/cisco-sa-20060111-mars.shtml

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