CVE-2023-44184
Published: 13 October 2023
Summary
CVE-2023-44184 is a medium-severity Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer (CWE-119) vulnerability in Juniper Junos. Its CVSS base score is 6.5 (Medium).
Operationally, ranked at the 33.1th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2023-48543
Vulnerability details
An Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer vulnerability in the management daemon (mgd) process of Juniper Networks Junos OS and Junos OS Evolved allows a network-based authenticated low-privileged attacker, by executing a specific command via…
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NETCONF, to cause a CPU Denial of Service to the device's control plane. This issue affects: Juniper Networks Junos OS * All versions prior to 20.4R3-S7; * 21.2 versions prior to 21.2R3-S5; * 21.3 versions prior to 21.3R3-S5; * 21.4 versions prior to 21.4R3-S4; * 22.1 versions prior to 22.1R3-S2; * 22.2 versions prior to 22.2R3; * 22.3 versions prior to 22.3R2-S1, 22.3R3; * 22.4 versions prior to 22.4R1-S2, 22.4R2. Juniper Networks Junos OS Evolved * All versions prior to 21.4R3-S4-EVO; * 22.1 versions prior to 22.1R3-S2-EVO; * 22.2 versions prior to 22.2R3-EVO; * 22.3 versions prior to 22.3R3-EVO; * 22.4 versions prior to 22.4R2-EVO. An indicator of compromise can be seen by first determining if the NETCONF client is logged in and fails to log out after a reasonable period of time and secondly reviewing the WCPU percentage for the mgd process by running the following command: mgd process example: user@device-re#> show system processes extensive | match "mgd|PID" | except last PID USERNAME PRI NICE SIZE RES STATE C TIME WCPU COMMAND 92476 root 100 0 500M 89024K CPU3 3 57.5H 89.60% mgd <<<<<<<<<<< review the high cpu percentage. Example to check for NETCONF activity: While there is no specific command that shows a specific session in use for NETCONF, you can review logs for UI_LOG_EVENT with "client-mode 'netconf'" For example: mgd[38121]: UI_LOGIN_EVENT: User 'root' login, class 'super-user' [38121], ssh-connection '10.1.1.1 201 55480 10.1.1.2 22', client-mode 'netconf'
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
No named actor attribution yet. ATT&CK technique mapping in progress for this CVE.
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Likely Mitigating Controls AI
Per-CVE control mapping for this CVE has not run yet; the list below is derived from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry.
Ongoing control assessments and code testing (static/dynamic analysis, fuzzing) surface memory buffer restriction failures, which are then remediated before release.
Managed runtimes used by platform-independent applications (e.g., JVM, CLR) enforce memory safety, preventing most buffer overflows that require direct memory manipulation.
Memory protections (e.g., W^X, ASLR) make exploitation of buffer-boundary violations far harder to turn into code execution.
Detects exploitation attempts that produce memory corruption, crashes, or anomalous behavior.