CVE intelligence and bounded remediation
CVE-2018-0147 — Cisco Secure Access Control System Java Deserialization Vulnerability
A vulnerability in Java deserialization used by Cisco Secure Access Control System (ACS) prior to release 5.8 patch 9 could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to execute arbitrary commands on an affected device. The vulnerability is due to insecure deserialization of user-supplied content by the affected software. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a crafted serialized Java object. An exploit could allow the attacker to execute arbitrary commands on the device with root privileges. Cisco Bug IDs: CSCvh25988.
- Severity
- Critical
- CVSS
- 9.8 (3.1)
- Published
- 2018-03-08
- CISA KEV
- Known exploited
- Ecosystem
- java/maven
- Weaknesses
- CWE-20, CWE-502
Affected products
- cisco / secure_access_control_system / 5.2(0.3)
Matched remediation archetype
Unsafe deserialization and object reconstruction
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Check exposure
- Inventory serialization formats accepted from requests, queues, caches, files, cookies, and cross-service messages.
- Trace whether untrusted input can select classes, types, callbacks, constructors, or object hooks during decoding.
- Identify signing, schema validation, trust-boundary, and compatibility settings for each decoder.
Remediate safely
- Replace native object deserialization with a data-only format and explicit schema validation.
- If replacement is not immediate, use a safe decoder with a minimal type allowlist and disable polymorphic or executable hooks.
- Update the affected library and add inert tests for unknown types, extra fields, malformed nesting, and unsigned data.
Authoritative sources
Complete CVE record and remediation plan
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