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ICS-CERT Warns of Serious Flaws In Tridium SCADA Software
Trailrunner7 writes "The DHS and ICS-CERT are warning users of some popular Tridium Niagara AX industrial control system software about a series of major vulnerabilities in the applications that are remotely exploitable and could be used to take over vulnerable systems. The bugs, discovered by researchers Billy Rios and Terry McCorkle, are just the latest in a series of vulnerabilities found in the esoteric ICS software packages that control utilities and other critical systems. The string of bugs reported by Rios and McCorkle include a directory traversal issue that gives an attacker the ability to access files that should be restricted. The researchers also discovered that the Niagara software stores user credentials in an insecure manner. There are publicly available exploits for some of the vulnerabilities."
All of these SCADA system were using security by obscurity or just no security at all for years. So we're going to keep seeing these alerts and warning for a while. Shoot we still see them with major desktop and server operating systems. If there is a reason to exploit a system, someone will figure out how to.
Of course they aren't connected to the internet. They're connected to each other by unencrypted radio links.
They would know.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
This alert is actually not very new and dates back to July. ICS-CERT re-releases things all the time in order to update small things and be sre people see an update, no matter how minor. Here is the original that came out in July:
http://www.us-cert.gov/control_systems/pdf/ICS-ALERT-12-195-01.pdf [us-cert.gov] -- It's pretty much identical from what I can see.
Actually, it's designed to be web-facing.
Niagara^AX is a software framework and development environment that solves the challenges associated with building Internet-enabled products, device-to-enterprise applications and distributed Internet-enabled automation systems.
Worse, this is a laughably simple exploit of the web-facing interface:
By default, the Tridium Niagara AX software is not configured to deny access to restricted parent directories... An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a specially crafted request to the Web server running on Port 80/TCP
"The system insecurely stores user authentication credentials, which are susceptible to interception and retrieval. User authentication credentials are stored in the Niagara station configuration file, config.bog, which is located in the root of the station folder"
In other words, it's about as simple as GET /../config.bog HTTP/1.1
SCADA is a general-use acronym, Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition. It has been in common use in the industrial control system world for at least 20 years. It is not a term specific to Siemens or any other control systems vendor. And it is not incorrect to apply the acronym to application areas like building automation; there can be a fair amount of overlap in system architecture, devices, & communication protocols between building automation and industrial manafacturing automation.
Source: 10 years experience as a industrial control systems engineer.
sigs are for suckers
Mod Superflex up = Informative.
Every platform that I've ever worked with in 20+ years of industrial networking (yeah, I remember TISTAR over coax) has demonstrated it's own unique vulnerabilities that the vendors arrogantly ignore. The diligent engineer/integrator must, regardless of platform or deployment, be aware and take reasonable precautions.
Automation as an industry shares the same classic security handicaps as the internet and telecom industries: Careless users, badly written code, and low-budget management. We get paid to try to plug the holes.
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.