CVE-2002-2208 in IOS
Summary
by MITRE
Extended Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP), as implemented in Cisco IOS 11.3 through 12.2 and other products, allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (flood) by sending a large number of spoofed EIGRP neighbor announcements, which results in an ARP storm on the local network.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 08/29/2025
The vulnerability described in CVE-2002-2208 represents a significant denial of service weakness within Cisco's Extended Interior Gateway Routing Protocol implementation. This flaw affects Cisco IOS versions ranging from 11.3 through 12.2, making it a persistent issue across multiple generations of network infrastructure software. The vulnerability stems from insufficient validation of EIGRP neighbor announcements, which creates an exploitable condition where malicious actors can manipulate network routing behavior through crafted network traffic.
The technical mechanism behind this vulnerability involves the improper handling of EIGRP neighbor advertisement messages within the routing protocol implementation. When a remote attacker sends a large volume of spoofed EIGRP neighbor announcements, the affected Cisco device processes these messages without adequate verification of their legitimacy. This processing behavior triggers an excessive number of Address Resolution Protocol requests throughout the local network segment, creating what is known as an ARP storm. The ARP storm phenomenon occurs because each spoofed neighbor announcement causes the device to attempt to resolve the associated MAC addresses, leading to a massive increase in ARP traffic that can overwhelm network resources and disrupt normal operations.
From an operational perspective, this vulnerability presents a severe risk to network availability and stability. The flood of spoofed EIGRP messages can cause network devices to consume excessive CPU resources while processing the invalid neighbor announcements, ultimately leading to complete service disruption. Network administrators may observe degraded performance, intermittent connectivity issues, or complete network outages as the ARP storm propagates through the local network segment. The impact extends beyond individual devices to potentially affect entire network domains, as the flooding behavior can overwhelm network switches and routers that are not properly configured to handle such traffic volumes.
The vulnerability aligns with CWE-129, which addresses improper validation of input data, and represents a classic example of how insufficient input validation can lead to denial of service conditions. From an ATT&CK framework perspective, this vulnerability maps to the T1498 technique of Network Denial of Service, where adversaries leverage protocol implementation weaknesses to disrupt network availability. The attack vector requires minimal sophistication, as it only requires sending spoofed network packets, making it particularly dangerous for network infrastructure that lacks proper security controls. Organizations should implement proper network segmentation and access controls to limit exposure to such attacks, while also ensuring that affected devices are updated to versions that address this specific vulnerability in the EIGRP implementation.