CVE-2015-0591 in Unified Communications Domain Manager
Summary
by MITRE
Cisco Unified Communications Domain Manager (UCDM) 10 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (daemon hang and GUI outage) via a flood of malformed TCP packets, aka Bug ID CSCur44177.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 03/08/2022
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2015-0591 affects Cisco Unified Communications Domain Manager version 10, representing a significant security flaw that impacts the availability of critical communication infrastructure. This issue manifests as a remote denial of service condition that can be triggered by attackers exploiting weaknesses in the system's TCP packet handling mechanisms. The vulnerability specifically targets the daemon processes that manage the UCDM's core functionality, leading to complete service outages that disrupt business communication operations.
The technical flaw resides in the improper handling of malformed TCP packets within the UCDM's network processing components. When the system receives a flood of specially crafted malformed packets, it fails to properly validate or reject these inputs, causing the underlying daemon processes to become unresponsive or enter a state of permanent hang. This behavior directly impacts the graphical user interface that administrators rely upon for system management, resulting in complete outage of the administrative console. The vulnerability demonstrates characteristics consistent with CWE-129 Input Validation and CWE-400 Uncontrolled Resource Consumption, where insufficient input validation leads to resource exhaustion and system instability.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple service disruption to encompass broader business continuity concerns for organizations relying on Cisco UCDM for their communication infrastructure. When the daemon hangs and GUI becomes unavailable, system administrators lose the ability to monitor, configure, or troubleshoot the communication domain manager, potentially affecting voice and video services across the enterprise. The remote exploitability means that attackers can trigger this condition from external networks without requiring local access or authentication credentials, making the vulnerability particularly dangerous in environments where network segmentation is not properly implemented. This scenario aligns with ATT&CK technique T1499.004 for Network Denial of Service and represents a critical threat to operational resilience in unified communications deployments.
Organizations affected by this vulnerability should implement immediate mitigations including network segmentation to limit access to the UCDM system, deployment of intrusion prevention systems that can detect and block malformed TCP traffic patterns, and application of Cisco's official security patches. Network administrators should also consider implementing rate limiting mechanisms at network boundaries to prevent packet flooding attacks from overwhelming the system. The vulnerability highlights the importance of proper input validation and resource management in network services, emphasizing that even seemingly benign network traffic can be weaponized to cause significant service disruption. Regular security assessments and vulnerability management programs should prioritize identification and remediation of similar weaknesses in communication infrastructure to prevent cascading failures that could impact critical business operations.