Cisco vulnerability posted to Internet

IDG News Service - One day after a security researcher and organizers of the Black Hat USA conference agreed not to post details of vulnerabilities in Cisco Systems Inc.'s router software, the information has been published on the Internet.

On Friday, the Web site Cryptome.org posted what appear to be slides written to accompany a presentation given by former Internet Security Systems Inc. (ISS) researcher Michael Lynn at the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas. The slides had been published in conference materials for the show, but after a last-minute decision by ISS to cancel the presentation, they were literally ripped from the Black Hat books.

ISS had planned to replace the Wednesday presentation, titled "The Holy Grail: Cisco IOS Shellcode and Remote Execution," with a different one. But Lynn, formerly a research analyst at ISS, quit his job and gave the Cisco presentation anyway.

In it, he described a now-patched flaw in the Internetwork Operating System (IOS) software used to power Cisco's routers, and demonstrated a buffer-overflow attack in which he took control of a router. Although Cisco was informed of the flaw by ISS and patched its firmware in April, users running older versions of the company's software are at risk, he said.

Black Hat and Lynn were then sued by Cisco and ISS in an attempt to prevent the details of Lynn's talk from being circulated. On Thursday, the parties came to an agreement with Lynn agreeing to silence on the matter (see Update: ISS researcher agrees to silence on Cisco flaws).

A number of the Cryptome slides appear to be nearly identical to Lynn's presentation, but unlike the slides that were presented at Black Hat, they contain the ISS logo, indicating that they may be copies of the original Black Hat show materials. They also do not include a link to Lynn's resume, which was on one of the last slides the newly unemployed researcher presented to the Black Hat audience.

The slides, which appeared to have been last modified on July 1, came from a source who asked not to be named, and who claimed that the document is "the Black Hat presentation," according to John Young, administrator of the Cryptome Web site. "The source was not Michael Lynn, or did not use that name," he said via e-mail.


A Cisco spokesman said his company is not planning any further legal action relating to Lynn's talk. "With the capabilities of the Internet, it becomes a futile effort," he said. "If you pop a down pillow in the middle of

Reprinted with permission from

IDG.net
Story copyright 2009 International Data Group. All rights reserved.