CVE-2010-2839 in Unified Presence Server
Summary
by MITRE
SIPD in Cisco Unified Presence 6.x before 6.0(7) and 7.x before 7.0(8) allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (stack memory corruption and process failure) via a malformed SIP message, aka Bug ID CSCtd14474.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 03/03/2017
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2010-2839 represents a critical stack memory corruption flaw within Cisco Unified Presence SIPD component affecting versions 6.x before 6.0(7) and 7.x before 7.0(8). This issue resides in the Session Initiation Protocol daemon implementation that processes incoming SIP messages for presence services. The vulnerability manifests when the system receives malformed SIP messages that trigger improper memory handling during message parsing and processing operations. The flaw specifically impacts the stack memory management routines within the SIPD service, leading to unpredictable behavior and system instability.
The technical exploitation of this vulnerability occurs through the injection of malformed SIP messages that contain specially crafted data structures designed to trigger buffer overflows or memory corruption patterns within the SIPD processing code. When the system attempts to parse these malformed messages, the insufficient input validation and memory boundary checking mechanisms fail to properly handle the unexpected data formats. This results in stack corruption that can lead to arbitrary code execution or complete process termination, ultimately causing denial of service conditions for the presence services. The vulnerability aligns with CWE-121 Stack-based Buffer Overflow, which specifically addresses buffer overflow conditions that occur in stack memory regions.
From an operational perspective, this vulnerability presents significant risk to enterprise communication infrastructures that rely on Cisco Unified Presence services for presence information and real-time communication status updates. The remote attack vector means that malicious actors can exploit this flaw from outside the network perimeter without requiring authentication credentials, making it particularly dangerous for organizations with exposed SIP services. The denial of service impact severely affects business continuity as presence services become unavailable, disrupting collaboration workflows, instant messaging, and real-time communication capabilities across the enterprise. Network administrators may experience service degradation or complete loss of presence functionality, potentially affecting thousands of users depending on the scale of the deployment.
The mitigation strategy for CVE-2010-2839 primarily involves applying the official Cisco security patches and updates that address the memory handling vulnerabilities within the SIPD component. Organizations should immediately upgrade to Cisco Unified Presence versions 6.0(7) or 7.0(8) and later, which contain the necessary code modifications to properly validate incoming SIP messages and implement robust memory boundary checking. Network segmentation and access control measures can provide additional defense in depth by limiting exposure of the affected services to trusted networks only. Implementing SIP message filtering and rate limiting mechanisms at network boundaries can help detect and prevent malformed message patterns from reaching the vulnerable systems. Security monitoring should include detection of unusual SIP traffic patterns and process failure events that may indicate exploitation attempts. This vulnerability also maps to ATT&CK technique T1499.004 for Denial of Service and T1590.001 for Reconnaissance, as attackers would need to identify the vulnerable system configuration before executing the attack.