I just happened to see this : Last month, a company called Internet Security Systems (ISS) issued an alert to warn users that Cisco's VoIP offering had a security flaw that would allow just that. According to the company, this implementation flaw in Cisco's Call Manager, which handles call signaling and routing, could allow a buffer overflow that would grant an intruder access to the system to listen in on all calls routed through it. This is one scenario described by ISS and other vendors focused on selling technology to plug the security holes in VoIP, a method for sending voice traffic over IP that many say was not designed with security in mind. ISS and its competitors, which come to this new field largely from the VoIP management and IP security markets, forecast big risks for companies that don't take VoIP security seriously, and undoubtedly look forward to formidable revenue streams generated by those that do. Guru -----Original Message----- From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu] On Behalf Of Janet Sullivan Sent: Friday, July 29, 2005 12:44 PM To: swm@emanon.com; nanog@merit.edu Subject: Re: Cisco IOS Exploit Cover Up Scott Morris wrote:

And quite honestly, we can probably be pretty safe in assuming they will not be running IPv6 (current exploit) or SNMP (older exploits) or BGP (other exploits) or SSH (even other exploits) on that box. :) (the 1601 or the 2500's)

If a worm writer wanted to cause chaos, they wouldn't target 2500s, but 7200s, 7600s, GSRs, etc. The way I see it, all that's needed is two major exploits, one known by Cisco, one not. Exploit #1 will be made public. Cisco will released fixed code. Good service providers will upgrade. The upgraded code version will be the one targeted by the second, unknown, exploit. A two-part worm can infect Windows boxen via any common method, and then use them to try the exploit against routers. A windows box can find routers to attack easily enough by doing traceroutes to various sites. Then, the windows boxen can try a limited set of exploit variants on each router. Not all routers will be affected, but some will. As for what the worm could do - well, it could report home to the worm creators that "Hey, you 0wn X number of routers", or it could do something fun like erasing configs and locking out console ports. ;-) Honestly, I've been expecting something like that to happen for years now. <shrug>