The advisory says that products running certain versions of IOS are vulnerable to attack from specially written IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6) packets. The attack must be launched from within a local area network and only affects devices that "have been explicitly configured to process IPv6," it says.
Cisco began fixing the vulnerability in its firmware last April, and so most customers who have up-to-date versions of IOS are not affected, the Cisco spokesman said. Some "non-mainstream" versions of Cisco's products may still be vulnerable to the attack, however, and Cisco is advising those users to turn off IPv6. "Of the small population that actually uses IPv6, there could be 10 percent that need to disable IPv6," he said.
Cisco expects that all versions of IOS will be patched soon, the spokesman said.
By suing Lynn and Black Hat, Cisco ended up drawing much more attention to the flaw than it would have otherwise received, according to Richard Forno, the independent security consultant who maintains the Infowarrior.com Web site. Forno said that he posted the slides, in part, to protest Cisco's heavy-handed handling of the matter. "When I found them, boom, up they went," he said. "I don't hold Cisco in high esteem right now for how they handled this."
The slides can be found at http://www.infowarrior.org/users/rforno/lynn-cisco.pdf
Cisco's advisory can be found at http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/products_security_advisory09186a00804d82c9.shtml
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