Cisco patches critical flaws in many of its switches and security appliances

Switchzilla has released 24 security advisories to document and patch critical and high-severity flaws recently found in hundreds of devices, including switches, firewalls and security appliances.

On June 20, the networking giant published a knowledgebase article titled “Cisco FXOS and NX-OS Software Security Advisory Collection,” which includes 24 advisories describing as many vulnerabilities in Cisco FXOS Software and Cisco NX-OS Software. Alongside each documented bug, Cisco released patches for the vulnerabilities.

“Five of the vulnerabilities have a Security Impact Rating (SIR) of Critical. The remaining 19 vulnerabilities have a SIR of High,” reads the KB article on Cisco”s security center.

“Successful exploitation of the vulnerabilities could allow an attacker to gain unauthorized access to an affected device, gain elevated privileges for an affected device, execute arbitrary code, execute arbitrary commands, gain access to sensitive information, or cause a denial of service (DoS) condition on an affected device,” according to the company.

Half of the 24 flaws are found in both Cisco FXOS Software and Cisco NX-OS Software and the remaining vulnerabilities affect only Cisco NX-OS Software, Cisco says. The firm confirmed that Cisco IOS Software and Cisco IOS XE Software remain unaffected at this point.

A table in the KB article lets users identify the advisories associated with their products, including the relevant patches. Since the flaws were reportedly found during internal testing, Cisco has no reason to believe these vulnerabilities are actively exploited in the wild. Nonetheless, now that the word is out, patching is recommended, if not imperative.