Security News > 2021 > June > Researcher Finds Several Vulnerabilities in Cisco Small Business Switches
A researcher has identified several vulnerabilities, including ones that have been rated high severity, in Cisco's Small Business 220 series smart switches.
The vulnerabilities were discovered by security researcher Jasper Lievisse Adriaanse, and they impact switches that run firmware versions earlier than 1.2.0.6 and have the web-based management interface enabled - the interface is enabled by default.
In an advisory released this week, Cisco said Lievisse Adriaanse found four types of security holes in the small business switches.
Lievisse Adriaanse told SecurityWeek that while he hasn't tested this, it may be possible for an attacker to chain these two vulnerabilities.
Asked about a worst case theoretical attack scenario involving these vulnerabilities, the researcher said, "Theoretically speaking, the worst case scenario is someone on the same L2 domain performs the XSS attack and obtains administrative privileges and while at it they could gain root on the underlying OS. I guess you could set up a span port and MiTM all traffic going through the switch, or perhaps find a way to gain persistence. With administrative access to the web interface and root on the underlying minimal Linux system the options are abundant."
The researcher said that while he hasn't checked, the impacted switches should not be directly exposed to the internet.