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SCADA Problems Too Big To Call 'Bugs,' Says DHS
chicksdaddy writes "With the one year anniversary of Stuxnet upon us, a senior cybersecurity official at the Department of Homeland Security says the agency is reevaluating whether it makes sense to warn the public about all of the security failings of industrial control system (ICS) and SCADA software used to control the U.S.'s critical infrastructure. DHS says it is rethinking the conditions under which it will use security advisories from ICS-CERT to warn the public about security issues in ICS products. The changes could recast certain kinds of vulnerabilities as 'design issues' rather than a security holes. No surprise: independent ICS experts like Ralph Langner worry that DHS is ducking responsibility for forcing changes that will secure the software used to run the nation's critical infrastructure. 'This radically cuts the amount of vulnerabilities in the ICS space by roughly 90%, since the vast majority of security "issues" we have are not bugs, but design flaws,' Langner writes on his blog. 'So today everybody has gotten much more secure because so many vulnerabilities just disappeared.'"
Some extra info popped up online just a few days ago - a SCADA consultant posted this a few days ago. It's slightly terrifying, though someone with more SCADA experience than me would have to verify its accuracy:
For those who do not know, 747's are big flying Unix hosts. At the time, the engine management system on this particular airline was Solaris based. The patching was well behind and they used telnet as SSH broke the menus and the budget did not extend to fixing this. The engineers could actually access the engine management system of a 747 in route. If issues are noted, they can re-tune the engine in air.
The issue here is that all that separated the engine control systems and the open network was NAT based filters. There were (and as far as I know this is true today), no extrusion controls. They filter incoming traffic, but all outgoing traffic is allowed. For those who engage in Pen Testing and know what a shoveled shell is... I need not say more.
More here: https://www.infosecisland.com/blogview/16696-FACT-CHECK-SCADA-Systems-Are-Online-Now.html
sig:- (wit >= sarcasm)
it matters to beaurocrats, unfortunately.
the categorization of these flaws, and whether they are a "bug" or not, can determine by law or policy who is on the hook for the $$$ required to fix the flaw.
SCADA? I don't care about. Not directly. But the problem is that once the government says, "These aren't vulnerabilities or security holes. These are design issues." The problem is that you've set the example, and other software vendors are going to follow.
Example: "The denial of service attack against your application is not a security vulnerability, it is just a design issue that everything locks up for a while if it gets an incoming packet, and tries to resolve the IP address against its authoritative DNS server while that is DNS server is offline. We only do security fixes on old products / old releases. Sorry."
"Design issue, not a security vulnerability" is not a distinction you want easily drawn. Others will follow a government example if it is an easy out.
We do SCADA systems in the States. We subscribe to several polices regarding SCADA networks:
1) DO NOT connect your SCADA network to the Internet
2) if you must connect for remote-access, use a patch cord that you ALWAYS unplug afterward.
3) DO NOT use your SCADA machines for desktop business purposes - especially on the Internet!
Argh, the crap that appears in the media. For example, you cannot "infect" a PLC. Why? They don't run Java (or script), or any language recognizable by the Internet community. They don't even run executables, in the sense that PCs do. Their programming is done in a specialized, proprietary language that requires a specialized IDE to manipulate. Write you own? Sure, if you have thousands upon thousands of man-hours handy. Do an open source IDE? Within 24 hours of posting your project somewhere, the manufacturer will be knocking at your door. PLCs are very, very proprietary, and they makers want them to stay that way.
Stuxnet infected a PC, causing it to change the signals it was sending to motor speed controllers, thus fouling up a process. Which is why you keep your SCADA PCs as far away from the Internet as you possibly can.
If you design a car with a gas tank that dislodges from the filler neck in a crash, spilling fuel in the case of a moderate crash, turning a survivable minor injury crash into a life-threatening incident, then you designed it wrong. If you purposefully design it to keep the filler neck attached for all crashes, but a part sourced for it did not meet specifications, resulting in inadvertent detachment, then you have a "bug" that was most certainly not a design flaw, but a build (coding) flaw.
One is a purposeful choice to make an inferior product to save time/money. The other is a properly designed product with an unintentional flaw. Sadly, deliberate negligence is tolerated (and seemingly encouraged), while unintended flaws are punished more harshly. But that's government security for you. Appearance is much more important than effect.
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