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Security Advisory - Permission Control Vulnerability in Some Huawei Switches

  • SA No:huawei-sa-20160217-01-switch
  • Initial Release Date: Feb 17, 2016
  • Last Release Date: Feb 17, 2016

Some Huawei switches have a permission control vulnerability. If a switch enables Authentication, Authorization and Accounting (AAA) for permission control and user permissions are not appropriate, AAA users may obtain the virtual type terminal (VTY) access permission, resulting in privilege escalation. (Vulnerability ID: HWPSIRT-2015-08048)

This vulnerability has been assigned Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) ID: CVE-2016-2404.

Huawei has released software updates to fix these vulnerabilities. This advisory is available at the following link:

http://www.huawei.com/en/psirt/security-advisories/huawei-sa-20160217-01-switch-en


Product Name

Affected Version

Resolved Product and Version

S5700/ S6700/ S7700/ S9700

V200R001C00SPC300

Upgrade to V200R005C00SPC500+V200R005SPH009

V200R002C00SPC100

V200R003C00SPC300

V200R005C00SPC500

V200R005SPH009

V200R006C00

Upgrade to 
V200R007C00SPC500

S12700

V200R005C00SPC500

V200R005SPH009

V200R006C00

Upgrade to 
V200R007C00SPC500

ACU2

V200R005C00SPC500

Upgrade to 
V200R006C10SPC200

V200R006C00

An attacker can exploit this vulnerability to escalate user privilege.

The vulnerability classification has been performed by using the CVSSv2 scoring system (http://www.first.org/cvss/).

Base Score: 6.0 (AV:N/AC:M/Au:S/C:P/I:P/A:P)

Temporal Score: 5.3 (E:F/RL:O/RC:C)

1. Prerequisite:

AAA is enabled on the switch, and the administrator incorrectly assigns user permissions;

2. Attacking procedure:

If AAA is enabled for permission control and user permissions are inappropriate, the attacker can use an AAA account to obtain VTY access permissions, resulting in privilege escalation. 

Customers should contact Huawei TAC (Huawei Technical Assistance Center) to request the upgrades. For TAC contact information, please refer to Huawei worldwide website at http://www.huawei.com/en/psirt/report-vulnerabilities

This vulnerability was discovered by Huawei internal tester.

2016-02-17 V1.0 INITIAL

Huawei adheres to protecting the ultimate interests of users with best efforts and the principle of responsible disclosure and deal with product security issues through our response mechanism.

To enjoy Huawei PSIRT services and obtain Huawei product vulnerability information, please visit http://www.huawei.com/en/psirt.

To report a security vulnerability in Huawei products and solutions, please send it to PSIRT@huawei.com. For details, please visit http://www.huawei.com/en/psirt/report-vulnerabilities.


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