CVE-2017-3838 Cisco CVE debrief

Who should care

Administrators and security teams responsible for Cisco Secure Access Control System deployments, especially systems running the affected 5.8(2.5) release and any environment where users access the ACS web interface.

Technical summary

The vulnerability is a DOM-based XSS issue in the ACS web interface. NVD lists the attack vector as network reachable, with no authentication required, but with user interaction required and a changed scope. The recorded CVSS v3.0 vector is AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:N, indicating that successful abuse could expose or alter browser-side content for the interacting user.

Defensive priority

Medium. The issue is remotely reachable and requires no attacker authentication, but it does require user interaction and the recorded impact is limited to low confidentiality and integrity effects. Prioritize remediation if the ACS web interface is exposed to users or administrators.

Recommended defensive actions

• Confirm whether Cisco Secure Access Control System 5.8(2.5) is deployed anywhere in your environment.
• Follow Cisco's vendor advisory guidance for remediation and update to a non-affected release if available.
• Restrict access to the ACS web interface to trusted administrative networks only.
• Treat unexpected links, crafted URLs, and unusual web interface behavior as potential XSS indicators.
• Review browser-side protections and security controls used by administrators accessing the ACS interface.

Evidence notes

This debrief is based only on the supplied CVE/NVD corpus and referenced Cisco advisory links. The record states: unauthenticated remote attacker, DOM-based XSS, affected release 5.8(2.5), and CWE-79. Published date used here is the CVE/NVD published timestamp of 2017-02-22T02:59:00.480Z. The modified timestamp is record-maintenance context only and is not treated as the issue date.

Official resources