CVE-2017-12238: Cisco Catalyst 6800 Series Switches VPLS Denial-of-Service Vulnerability

Severity: medium (CVSS 6.5 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: yes — in CISA KEV since 2022-03-03
EPSS: 2.0% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2017-09-29 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-399

Description

A vulnerability in the Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS) code of Cisco IOS 15.0 through 15.4 for Cisco Catalyst 6800 Series Switches could allow an unauthenticated, adjacent attacker to cause a C6800-16P10G or C6800-16P10G-XL type line card to crash, resulting in a denial of service (DoS) condition. The vulnerability is due to a memory management issue in the affected software. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by creating a large number of VPLS-generated MAC entries in the MAC address table of an affected device. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to cause a C6800-16P10G or C6800-16P10G-XL type line card to crash, resulting in a DoS condition. This vulnerability affects Cisco Catalyst 6800 Series Switches that are running a vulnerable release of Cisco IOS Software and have a Cisco C6800-16P10G or C6800-16P10G-XL line card in use with Supervisor Engine 6T. To be vulnerable, the device must also be configured with VPLS and the C6800-16P10G or C6800-16P10G-XL line card needs to be the core-facing MPLS interfaces. Cisco Bug IDs: CSCva61927.

Affected products

Cisco IOS: from 15.0 through 15.4

References

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