Cisco's Identity Services Engine Hit by Perfect-Scoring Vulnerability

Cisco has disclosed yet another high-severity vulnerability in its products, this time affecting its Identity Services Engine (ISE) and ISE Passive Identity Connector (ISE-PIC). The flaw, given a perfect CVSS score of 10.0, allows an unauthenticated remote attacker to gain command execution with root privileges.

The issue lies within the API endpoint in Cisco's network access control platform, ISE. Insufficient authentication controls mean an attacker can send a crafted request to bypass the product's web-based management interface, requiring no credentials or user interaction.

Cisco warned that this vulnerability is under active attack and urged customers to install the fixes immediately. The company also advised admins to review ISE access logs for suspicious usernames on every node in a distributed deployment and check network and firewall logs outside the affected device for signs of unexpected uploads or downloads.