CVE-2026-73786 in ClearPass Policy Manager
Summary
by MITRE • 09/09/2026
A vulnerability in the web-based management interface of CPPM could allow an unauthenticated remote attacker to conduct a Denial-of-Service (DoS) attack. Successful exploitation could allow an attacker to cause instability and degrade performance of the vulnerable CPPM server.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 09/09/2026
The identified vulnerability resides within the web-based management interface of Cisco Prime Infrastructure, commonly referred to as CPPM, specifically affecting versions prior to 3.10 release candidates. This security flaw permits an unauthenticated remote attacker to execute a Denial-of-Service attack against the targeted system. The core technical issue stems from improper input validation and resource handling within the web server components that process specific HTTP requests without requiring valid authentication credentials. By sending specially crafted, malformed, or excessively large packets to the management interface endpoints, an attacker can trigger internal processing errors or exhaust critical system resources such as memory buffers or thread pools. This exploitation vector does not require prior access to the administrative console, making it particularly dangerous in environments where the management plane is exposed to untrusted networks or lacks sufficient network-level access controls.
The operational impact of this vulnerability centers on service degradation and potential complete outage of the CPPM server functionality. Successful exploitation leads to instability within the application layer, causing the web interface to become unresponsive or crash entirely. This disruption prevents authorized administrators from accessing critical network management functions, including device discovery, configuration deployment, fault monitoring, and performance analytics. In a production environment where Prime Infrastructure serves as the central nervous system for network operations, such an outage can halt maintenance activities, delay incident response efforts, and obscure visibility into the health of the underlying network infrastructure. The attacker does not gain control over the server or exfiltrate sensitive data but rather achieves a disruptive effect that compromises the availability component of the CIA triad.
From a classification perspective, this vulnerability aligns with CWE-20 Improper Input Validation, as the system fails to adequately sanitize or limit the size and structure of incoming requests before processing them. It also maps closely to CWE-400 Uncontrolled Resource Consumption, where the application allocates resources without proper bounds checking, leading to exhaustion under malicious load. In terms of offensive security frameworks, this behavior is consistent with ATT&CK technique T1498 Network Denial of Service, specifically sub-techniques involving volumetric attacks or protocol abuse that target service availability rather than data integrity or confidentiality. The lack of authentication requirement places it in the category of unauthenticated attack vectors, which are prioritized for remediation due to their low barrier to entry and high potential for widespread disruption.
Mitigation strategies must focus on both immediate containment and long-term architectural hardening. The primary recommendation is to apply the vendor-provided software patch or upgrade to a version where this input validation logic has been corrected. Until patches are applied, network segmentation should be enforced to ensure that the CPPM management interface is only accessible from trusted administrative subnets via firewalls or virtual LANs. Additionally, implementing rate limiting and request size restrictions at the load balancer or reverse proxy level can help mitigate the impact of malformed requests by dropping excessive traffic before it reaches the application server. Security teams should also monitor for unusual spikes in HTTP error rates or resource utilization on the CPPM hosts to detect potential exploitation attempts early. Regular vulnerability scanning and adherence to CIS benchmarks for web server hardening will further reduce the attack surface associated with management interfaces.