Static SSH host key in Cisco Umbrella allows stealing admin credentials

Cisco addressed a high severity vulnerability in the Cisco Umbrella Virtual Appliance (VA) that could allow stealing admin credentials.

Cisco addressed a high severity vulnerability in the Cisco Umbrella Virtual Appliance (VA), tracked as CVE-2022-20773, that could be exploited by an unauthenticated attacker to steal admin credentials remotely.

Umbrella is Cisco’s cloud-based Secure Internet Gateway (SIG) platform that provides users with multiple levels of defense against internet-based threats. Umbrella integrates secure web gateway, firewall, DNS-layer security, and cloud access security broker (CASB) functionality to protect systems against threats.

The CVE-2022-20773 flaw resides in the key-based SSH authentication mechanism of Cisco Umbrella Virtual Appliance and is due to the presence of a static SSH host key.

“This vulnerability is due to the presence of a static SSH host key. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by performing a man-in-the-middle attack on an SSH connection to the Umbrella VA. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to learn the administrator credentials, change configurations, or reload the VA.” reads the advisory published by Cisco.

The IT giant pointed out that SSH is not enabled by default on the Umbrella VA.

The flaw affects the Cisco Umbrella Virtual Appliance for both VMWare ESXi and Hyper-V running a software version earlier than 3.3.2. Customers should upgrade to the appropriate fixed software release:

Cisco Umbrella Virtual Appliance Software Release	First Fixed Release
3.2 and earlier	Migrate to a fixed release.
3.3	3.3.2

The company states that there are no workarounds or mitigations available for this issue. The good news is that the Cisco PSIRT is not aware of attacks in the wild that exploited this vulnerability.

The company credited Fraser Hess of Pinnacol Assurance for reporting this vulnerability.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, Cisco)

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