A vulnerability in the TCP socket code of Cisco IOS and IOS XE Software could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to cause an affected device to reload. The vulnerability is due to a state condition between the socket state and the transmission control block (TCB) state. While this vulnerability potentially affects all TCP applications, the only affected application observed so far is the HTTP server. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending specific HTTP requests at a sustained rate to a reachable IP address of the affected software. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to cause the affected device to reload, resulting in a denial of service (DoS) condition on an affected device.

The HTTP server in Cisco IOS on Catalyst switches does not properly handle TCP socket events, which allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (device crash) via crafted packets on TCP port (1) 80 or (2) 443, aka Bug ID CSCuc53853.