Cisco Firewall Vulnerability

Cisco has announced a critical vulnerability potentially affecting CISCO ASA firewalls. This could allow an unauthenticated remote attacker to breach a firewall via VPN (virtual private network).  This could ultimately grant full control of an organisation’s entire network to an attacker on the internet.

The vulnerability lies in the code of Cisco ASA Software, which is used by countless organisations throughout Ireland, and typically this VPN functionality would be enabled in such firewalls.

According to Brendan Fay, head of information security consultancy practice, Ward Solutions:

“A successful hacker could infiltrate the entire network of an organisation and commit fraud, steal sensitive personal and commercial information, access financial data, or use it as a base to attack other networks.

“Organisations affected or that think they might be affected should immediately contact their IT department or service provider to patch their firewall.  Remote access or inter-site VPN communications can also be disabled in the meantime, specifically to disable the IKE (Internet Key Exchange) service.”

Updating the CISCO Firewall software is a must and Cisco has released free software updates that address the vulnerability. These updates are available to all organisations that operate Cisco ASA Software, and more information on them can be found on its website.

Fay also recommends that Irish organisations should be proactive and vigilant to these threats and vulnerabilities whilst also ensuring that they have infrastructure in place to protect against cyber criminals.