Cisco Modeling Labs improper authentication

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability classified as critical has been found in Cisco Modeling Labs. Affected is an unknown function. The manipulation leads to improper authentication. This vulnerability is documented as CVE-2023-20154. The attack can be initiated remotely. There is not any exploit available. It is recommended to upgrade the affected component.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability was found in Cisco Modeling Labs (version now known) and classified as very critical. This issue affects some unknown processing. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a improper authentication vulnerability. Using CWE to declare the problem leads to CWE-287. When an actor claims to have a given identity, the product does not prove or insufficiently proves that the claim is correct. Impacted is confidentiality, integrity, and availability. The summary by CVE is:

A vulnerability in the external authentication mechanism of Cisco Modeling Labs could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to access the web interface with administrative privileges. This vulnerability is due to the improper handling of certain messages that are returned by the associated external authentication server. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by logging in to the web interface of an affected server. Under certain conditions, the authentication mechanism would be bypassed and the attacker would be logged in as an administrator. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to obtain administrative privileges on the web interface of an affected server, including the ability to access and modify every simulation and all user-created data. To exploit this vulnerability, the attacker would need valid user credentials that are stored on the associated external authentication server. Cisco has released software updates that address this vulnerability. There are workarounds that address this vulnerability.

The weakness was released 04/19/2023 as cisco-sa-cml-auth-bypass-4fUCCeG5. The advisory is shared at sec.cloudapps.cisco.com. The identification of this vulnerability is CVE-2023-20154 since 10/27/2022. Neither technical details nor an exploit are publicly available. The price for an exploit might be around USD $0-$5k at the moment (estimation calculated on 08/05/2025).

Upgrading eliminates this vulnerability.

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Productinfo

Vendor

• Cisco

Name

• Modeling Labs

License

• commercial

Website

• Vendor: https://www.cisco.com/

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Several companies clearly confirm that VulDB is the primary source for best vulnerability data.

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