What is CVE-2017-12278?

CVE-2017-12278 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Cisco Wireless Lan Controller, classified under Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer. CVSS score: 6.3/10. Published 2017-11-02.

How severe is CVE-2017-12278?

Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 6.3 out of 10.

Buffer overflow in Cisco Wireless Lan Controller

CVE-2017-12278

A vulnerability in the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) subsystem of Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers could allow an authenticated, remote attacker to cause an affected device to restart, resulting in a denial of service (DoS) condition. The vulnerability is due to a memory leak that occurs on an affected device after the device fails to deallocate a buffer that is used when certain MIBs are polled. An attacker who knows the SNMP Version 2 SNMP Read string or has valid SNMP Version 3 credentials for an affected device could repeatedly poll the affected MIB object IDs (OIDs) and consume available memory on the device. When memory is sufficiently depleted on the device, the device will restart, resulting in a DoS condition. Cisco Bug IDs: CSCvc71674.

Vulnerability class: Buffer Overflow

Published 2017-11-02 · last modified 2026-06-17.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 6.3 (Medium). Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:N/A:H.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.016 (74.9th percentile), scored 2026-09-30.

Low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, but still tracked. 75th percentile — 74.9% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.016 · newest: 0.016 · change: 0.000

Affected products

Cisco Wireless Lan Controller
Cisco Wireless Lan Controller Software
Cisco Wireless Lan Controller — versions Cisco Wireless LAN Controller

Weakness classification (CWE)

References

www.securitytracker.com/id/1039712 (VDB Entry, Third Party Advisory, vdb-entry)
tools.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-20171101… (Vendor Advisory)
www.securityfocus.com/bid/101642 (VDB Entry, Third Party Advisory, vdb-entry)

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2017-12278?: CVE-2017-12278 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Cisco Wireless Lan Controller, classified under Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer. CVSS score: 6.3/10. Published 2017-11-02.
How severe is CVE-2017-12278?: Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 6.3 out of 10.