CVE-2020-1823

Vulnerability

The Common Open Policy Service (COPS) protocol implementation in several Huawei products contains multiple out-of-bounds read vulnerabilities (HWPSIRT-2018-12275 through HWPSIRT-2018-12280 and HWPSIRT-2018-12289) [1]. The flaw resides in a specific decoding function that processes incoming COPS data packets. Affected products include IPS Module V500R001C30, V500R001C60, V500R005C00, and others listed in the Huawei advisory [1]. The issue occurs when the decoder reads data beyond the allocated buffer boundary.

Exploitation

An attacker can exploit these vulnerabilities by sending a specially crafted COPS packet to an affected device [1]. No authentication or prior access is required if the COPS service is exposed to the network. The out-of-bounds read is triggered during packet parsing when the decoding function attempts to process malformed or oversized fields.

Impact

Successful exploitation leads to an out-of-bounds read, which can cause the device to crash or become unresponsive, resulting in denial of service (DoS) [1]. The advisory does not indicate code execution or privilege escalation; the primary impact is service disruption.

Mitigation

Huawei has released software updates to fix these vulnerabilities [1]. Affected versions should be upgraded to the resolved versions listed in the advisory (e.g., IPS Module V500R005C20SPC500). The initial release date of the security advisory is 2020-06-03, with last update on 2020-08-26. No workarounds have been published; applying the patch is the recommended mitigation.