Russian state-sponsored hackers have been systematically exploiting a seven-year-old Cisco vulnerability to infiltrate critical infrastructure across telecommunications, higher education, and manufacturing sectors worldwide.
The FSB-linked group known as Static Tundra has weaponized CVE-2018-0171, a patched vulnerability in Cisco’s Smart Install feature, to establish persistent backdoors in network devices for long-term espionage operations targeting organizations of strategic interest to the Russian government.
Sophisticated Campaign Targets Unpatched Infrastructure
Static Tundra, assessed to be a sub-cluster of the notorious Energetic Bear group, has been conducting this campaign since at least 2015, with operations significantly escalating during the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
The group targets explicitly unpatched and end-of-life Cisco devices running IOS and IOS XE software, exploiting organizations that have failed to implement the security patch released by Cisco in 2018.
The vulnerability allows unauthenticated remote attackers to trigger device reloads or execute arbitrary code on affected systems.
Static Tundra employs bespoke automation tools to systematically scan for vulnerable devices, likely using public scanning services like Shodan to identify potential targets across North America, Asia, Africa, and Europe.
Advanced Persistence Through Network Device Compromise
Once initial access is gained through CVE-2018-0171 exploitation, Static Tundra deploys sophisticated techniques to maintain a long-term presence.
The group modifies device configurations to enable TFTP servers, allowing extraction of sensitive configuration data, including credentials and SNMP community strings.
They leverage these compromised credentials to establish deeper network access using SNMP protocols, often spoofing source addresses to bypass access control lists.
The group’s arsenal includes the historic SYNful Knock firmware implant, a modular backdoor injected directly into Cisco IOS images that survives device reboots.
This stealthy persistence mechanism responds to specially crafted TCP packets, providing covert remote access for years without detection.
Static Tundra also establishes Generic Routing Encapsulation tunnels to redirect valuable network traffic to attacker-controlled infrastructure for intelligence collection.
Critical Infrastructure at Risk
The campaign’s scope extends beyond Russia’s operations, with intelligence suggesting other state-sponsored actors are conducting similar network device compromise campaigns.
Victims span multiple sectors, with Ukrainian organizations experiencing intensified targeting since the conflict began.
Organizations must immediately apply patches for CVE-2018-0171 or disable Smart Install functionality on devices that cannot be updated. Additional hardening measures include implementing strong authentication, disabling unencrypted management protocols, and establishing comprehensive configuration monitoring.
The persistence of unpatched devices with Smart Install enabled continues to provide threat actors with extensive attack opportunities against critical infrastructure worldwide.
Indicators of compromise (IOCs)
| Indicator | Type | Known Activity |
| 185.141.24[.]222 | IP Address | 2023/03/23 |
| 185.82.202[.]34 | IP Address | 2025/01/15 – 2025/02/28 |
| 185.141.24[.]28 | IP Address | 2024/10/01 – 2025/07/03 |
| 185.82.200[.]181 | IP Address | 2024/10/01 – 2024/11/15 |
Find this Story Interesting! Follow us on Google News , LinkedIn and X to Get More Instant Updates
.jpg?resize=1068,580&ssl=1&description=Cisco Flaw - Russian state-sponsored hackers have been systematically exploiting a seven-year-old Cisco vulnerability to infiltrate .){kind=link}