Pierluigi Paganini
May 03, 2018
Experts at security firm Tenable have discovered a critical remote code execution vulnerability affecting Schneider Electric InduSoft Web Studio and InTouch Machine Edition products.
The InduSoft Web Studio is a development tool for human-machine interfaces (HMIs), supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems and embedded instrumentation solutions, while the InTouch Machine Edition is an HMI/SCADA development tool.
Boot products are widely adopted in almost any industry, from energy to building automation.
Researchers at Tenable discovered a stack-based buffer overflow vulnerability in the tools that can be exploited by a remote unauthenticated attacker to trigger a DoS condition or to execute arbitrary code execution with elevated privileges.
Tenable disclosed technical details and the following proof-of-concept (PoC) code for the vulnerability:
cat <(echo -ne '\x02\x57\x03\x02\x32'`python -c 'print "A"*0x500'`'\x09\x0a\x03') - | nc <target_host> 1234
According to the researchers, the buffer overflow issue could be exploited to fully compromise the vulnerable system and use it as an entry point in the target network.
An attacker can exploit the flaw by sending specially crafted packets and use HMI clients to read and write tags, and monitor alarms and events, he only needs to remotely connect to port 1234 on the targeted machine.
“Tenable Research found a new stack-based buffer overflow in InduSoft Web Studio and InTouch Machine Edition. A threat actor could send a crafted packet to exploit the buffer overflow vulnerability using a tag, alarm, event, read or write action to execute code.” reads the analysis published by Tenable.
“The vulnerability can be remotely exploited without authentication and targets the IWS Runtime Data Server service, by default on TCP port 1234. The software implements a custom protocol that uses various “commands.” This vulnerability is triggered through command 50, and is caused by the incorrect usage of a string conversion function.”
The flaw affects InduSoft Web Studio v8.1 and prior, and InTouch Machine Edition 2017 v8.1 and prior.
Schneider Electric addressed the vulnerability with the release of v8.1 SP1 for both products, security patches were made available on April 6.
“Customers using InduSoft Web Studio v8.1 or prior versions are affected and should upgrade and apply InduSoft Web Studio v8.1 SP1 as soon as possible.” reads the advisory published by Schneider Electric.
“Customers using InTouch Machine Edition 2017 v8.1 or prior versions are affected and should upgrade and apply InTouch Machine Edition 2017 v8.1 SP1 as soon as possible.”
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(Security Affairs – Schneider Electric InduSoft Web Studio,InTouch Machine Edition)
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