Cisco Catalyst Center Vulnerability

The root cause of this vulnerability is poor input validation: the appliance doesn’t properly sanitize HTTP requests, so an attacker can submit specially crafted data that tricks the system into elevating privileges. What’s especially concerning is how easily it can be exploited: someone with only Observer-level credentials—just read-only access—can leverage this bug to gain Administrator rights.

Once an attacker becomes an administrator, they can do practically anything: create new user accounts, change system settings, or otherwise undermine the network’s security posture.

Cisco identified the issue internally while working on a support case. They have released a fix: version 2.3.7.10-VA of the virtual appliance patches the flaw, and users who are running affected versions (2.3.7.3-VA and later) should update immediately. Notably, hardware appliances and AWS-based virtual appliances are not affected by this particular issue.

Unfortunately, there are no workarounds — the only way to secure systems is to apply the software update.

What I Think About This

I believe this vulnerability is very serious. Giving an “Observer” the ability to escalate to admin is a major misstep, especially in network-management tools where administrator access usually means full control over configurations.

On the upside, Cisco has already addressed the issue with a specific fixed version, which shows that they took the risk seriously. But still, any delay in updating could leave critical infrastructure exposed. So, in my view, if you’re using Catalyst Center Virtual Appliance, you need to act now and deploy the patch.