Field Notice: FN - 72314 - Cisco Unity Express: QuoVadis Root CA 2 Decommission Might Affect Smart Licensing and Smart Call Home Functionality - Software Upgrade Recommended

Notice

THIS FIELD NOTICE IS PROVIDED ON AN "AS IS" BASIS AND DOES NOT IMPLY ANY KIND OF GUARANTEE OR WARRANTY, INCLUDING THE WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY. YOUR USE OF THE INFORMATION ON THE FIELD NOTICE OR MATERIALS LINKED FROM THE FIELD NOTICE IS AT YOUR OWN RISK. CISCO RESERVES THE RIGHT TO CHANGE OR UPDATE THIS FIELD NOTICE AT ANY TIME.

Revision History

Revision	Publish Date	Comments
1.2	11-Apr-22	Updated the Products Affected Section
1.1	24-Feb-22	Updated the Problem Description, Background, Problem Symptom, and Workaround/Solution Sections
1.0	25-Jan-22	Initial Release

Products Affected

Affected OS Type	Affected Software Product	Affected Release	Affected Release Number	Comments
NON-IOS	Unity Express Complete Installation File Set	10	10.0.0, 10.0.1, 10.1.0, 10.2.0	Fix is available from 10.2.1 or later release.
NON-IOS	Unity Express Complete Installation File Set	9	9.0.5, 9.0.6, 9.0.7	Smart Licensing feature introduced in Release 9.0.5.

Defect Information

Defect ID	Headline
CSCvx00415	QuoVadis root CA decommission on intsrvengine

Problem Description

For affected versions of the Cisco Unity Express (CUE) software, some Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates issued from the QuoVadis root certificate authority (CA) trust chain before March 31, 2021 cannot be renewed from this CA. Once those certificates expire on devices or are removed from the Cisco cloud servers, functions such as Smart Licensing and Smart Call Home will fail to establish secure connections to Cisco and might not operate properly.

Background

The QuoVadis Root CA 2 Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) used by CUE software to issue SSL certificates is subject to an industry-wide issue that affects revocation abilities. Due to this issue, no new QuoVadis Root CA 2 certificates will be issued or renewed by Cisco after March 31, 2021. This affects certificate renewals on devices, Cisco cloud servers, and third-party services.

Certificates issued before the QuoVadis Root CA 2 was decommissioned will continue to be valid. However, the certificates will not renew when they expire on either the device or the Cisco cloud server. This will cause functions such as Smart Licensing and Smart Call Home to fail to establish secure connections to Cisco cloud servers.

This table shows a summary of the QuoVadis Root CA 2 certificate expiration dates for affected Cisco services.

Cisco Cloud Server	QuoVadis Certificate Expiration Date	Affected Services
tools.cisco.com	February 5, 2022	Smart Licensing Smart Call Home

Problem Symptom

Expiration of the QuoVadis Root CA 2 certificates affects these services with the associated symptoms.

Affected Services	Symptoms for Affected Services
Smart Licensing	Communication send error
Smart Call Home	Failure to connect to the server and the Call-Home HTTP request fails

 

There are two scenarios for CUE devices:

• Devices in the evaluation period:
  • Smart Licensing will continue to function for 90 days during the evaluation period.
  • Calls will start to fail once the evaluation period expires and the device is not registered to the Cisco Smart Software Manager (CSSM).
• Devices already registered with CSSM:
  • If there is not a firewall rule set up to block the SSL certificate download from the Cisco website, there will be no impact.
    Note: Ensure the network is able to download the certificate from http://www.cisco.com/security/pki/trs/ios_core.p7b.
  • If there is a firewall rule set up to block the SSL certificate download from the Cisco website, calls will start to fail and the Smart Licensing status will be “Unregistered: Registration Failed”.

For additional information, refer to the Cisco Smart Licensing Guide and the CUE Smart Licensing Guide for your specific version of 10.x software.

For CUE, enter the show license status command in order to view the licensing status. Affected CUE devices will show "Failure reason: Communication send error" in the output.

CUE # show license status

    Smart Licensing Status
    =======================
    Smart Licensing is ENABLED

    Registration:
      Status: UNREGISTERED - REGISTRATION FAILED
      Initial Registration: FAILED
        Failure Reason: Communication send error.
      Export-Controlled Functionality: Not Allowed

Workaround/Solution

Cisco has migrated from the QuoVadis Root CA 2 to the IdenTrust Commercial Root CA 1 for SSL certificates. For CUE devices, upgrade to software Version 10.2.1 or later in order to resolve the root CA certificate issue for affected platforms.

For More Information

If you require further assistance, or if you have any further questions regarding this field notice, please contact the Cisco Systems Technical Assistance Center (TAC) by one of the following methods:

• Open a service request on Cisco.com
• By email or telephone

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