Vulnerabilities > CVE-2024-20509 - Race Condition vulnerability in Cisco products
Summary
A vulnerability in the Cisco AnyConnect VPN server of Cisco Meraki MX and Cisco Meraki Z Series Teleworker Gateway devices could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to hijack an AnyConnect VPN session or cause a denial of service (DoS) condition for individual users of the AnyConnect VPN service on an affected device. This vulnerability is due to weak entropy for handlers that are used during the VPN authentication process as well as a race condition that exists in the same process. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by correctly guessing an authentication handler and then sending crafted HTTPS requests to an affected device. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to take over the AnyConnect VPN session from a target user or prevent the target user from establishing an AnyConnect VPN session with the affected device.
Vulnerable Configurations
Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE)
Common Attack Pattern Enumeration and Classification (CAPEC)
- Leveraging Race Conditions This attack targets a race condition occurring when multiple processes access and manipulate the same resource concurrently and the outcome of the execution depends on the particular order in which the access takes place. The attacker can leverage a race condition by "running the race", modifying the resource and modifying the normal execution flow. For instance a race condition can occur while accessing a file, the attacker can trick the system by replacing the original file with his version and cause the system to read the malicious file.
- Leveraging Time-of-Check and Time-of-Use (TOCTOU) Race Conditions This attack targets a race condition occurring between the time of check (state) for a resource and the time of use of a resource. The typical example is the file access. The attacker can leverage a file access race condition by "running the race", meaning that he would modify the resource between the first time the target program accesses the file and the time the target program uses the file. During that period of time, the attacker could do something such as replace the file and cause an escalation of privilege.