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Writeable SNMP default or guessable community names: all private

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Writeable SNMP default or guessable community names: all private

Severity
10
CVSS
(AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C)
Published
10/01/1998
Created
07/25/2018
Added
11/01/2004
Modified
12/04/2013

Description

The Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is a commonly used network service. Its primary function is to provide network administrators with information about all kinds of network connected devices. SNMP can be used to get and change system settings on a wide variety of devices, from network servers, to routers and printers. The drawback to this service is the authentication is an unencrypted "community string". In addition many SNMP servers provide very simple default community strings.

The community string "all private" was found to have write access to the SNMP server. This is a very serious condition and should be fixed as soon as possible. Attackers with write access to an SNMP server can possibly execute arbitrary commands with root level privilege. Attackers can shutdown machines, stop, start, or change the priority of tasks, and gain valuable information.

The community name "all private" may also indicate a more serious vulnerability if you are running Solstice Enterprise Agents(SEA) on Solaris. The Solstice Enterprise Agents (SEA) enables the creation of custom, extensible agents for device and system management for Solaris. SEA supports both the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) and DMI protocols. A default community string is present in the Sun SNMP subagent that may be remotely exploited by an unauthorized user to modify system parameters or execute arbitrary commands with root privileges. SEA was initially available as an unbundled product and later bundled with Solaris 2.6 at version 1.0.1.

Solution(s)

  • snmp-write-0021

References

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