Cisco Security Advisory – On September 24, 2014, a vulnerability in the Bash shell was publicly announced. The vulnerability is related to the way in which shell functions are passed though environment variables. The vulnerability may allow an attacker to inject commands into a Bash shell, depending on how the shell is invoked. The Bash shell may be invoked by a number of processes including, but not limited to, telnet, SSH, DHCP, and scripts hosted on web servers. All versions of GNU Bash starting with version 1.14 are affected by this vulnerability and the specific impact is determined by the characteristics of the process using the Bash shell. In the worst case, an unauthenticated remote attacker would be able to execute commands on an affected server. However, in most cases involving Cisco products, exploitation of the vulnerability results in an authenticated attacker having the ability to execute commands for which they are not authorized. A number of Cisco products ship with or leverage an affected version of the Bash shell. This advisory will be updated as additional information becomes available. Cisco may release free software updates that address this vulnerability if a product is determined to be affected by this vulnerability.