Researchers Find Slew of Flaws In SCADA Hardware, Software

Trailrunner7 writes "At the S4 security conference this week, 'Project Basecamp,' a volunteer-led security audit of leading programmable logic controllers (PLCs), performed by a team of top researchers found that decrepit hardware, buggy software and pitiful or nonexistent security features make thousands of PLCs vulnerable to trivial attacks by external hackers that could cause PLC devices to crash or run malicious code. 'We were looking for a Firesheep moment in PLC security,' Peterson told the audience of ICS security experts. They got one. 'It's a blood bath mostly,' said Wightman of Digital Bond. 'Many of these devices lack basic security features.' While the results of analysis of the various PLCs varied, the researchers found significant security issues with every system they tested, with some PLCs too brittle and insecure to even tolerate security scans and probing."

Comments

unreviewed code is buggy?

[Gothmolly]

So you're saying closed source, only-validate-functionality, stale code has security holes?

These things were too successful.

[icebike]

Most of these PLCs were simply too successful for their own good. Many of these designs were created in the 70s with no real intent of ever having then live in an on-line environment, but rather to be isolated in machinery as simple as pumps, motors, and simple stand along controllers for a variety of machines.

The problem lies not with the PLCs but the questionable decision to wire these things into the network.

Some of these things are extremely simple controllers. Others, like the mentioned D20 ME are micro computers onto themselves. These devices are built from a long line of simple process controllers, which grew to their current state from simply hanging more and more interfaces, better processors, and a mountain of legacy software, onto what started life as a very simple device.

None of them were ever intended to be put directly on the wild and wooly net, even when the did contain Ethernet ports, modems, and radios. Everyone assumed these were on their own in-plant network and that no one would hook them up to even their general purpose lan, let alone to computers accessible to the internet.

Anything less successful would have been replaced by a total redesign and rewrite from the ground up.

Re:These things were too successful.

[Anonymous Coward]

I program, install and commission PLCs in high security facilities, including prisons. We mostly use them for door control, interlocking and some low-level interfacing to other systems for which we don't have a high-level interface.

I do not believe that the responsibility for security should rest with a relatively cheap, simple bundle of IO and a processor programed in ladder logic. The security should be in preventing access to the SCADA/security network to which these controllers are attached. These things aren't servers, it's hard to imagine a reason for having them anywhere near the WWW. In our high security sites we usually have an air gap enforced by a physical barrier (two layers of four metre high razor tape fence) which is regularly broken by people disregarding policy and carrying in USB memory sticks. This is a potential attack vector, assuming whomever wrote the attack program had intimite knowledge of how the PLCs were programed. Most network security barriers are overcome in time as new vulnerabilities are discovered. Given the commission-and-hands-off nature of PLCs, rolling out updates to patch theoretical vulnerabilities is going to be a VERY hard sell, considering any change to the PLC usually requires re-commissioning every field device attached to it.