Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

SecurityWeekSecurityWeek

Vulnerabilities

Siemens Fixes Vulnerabilities in SIMATIC STEP 7, WinCC Products

Siemens has released service packs and updates to address several vulnerabilities affecting the company’s SIMATIC STEP 7 and SIMATIC WinCC solutions.

Researchers identified a total of four security holes affecting SIMATIC STEP 7 (TIA Portal), an engineering application used to configure and program SIMATIC controllers and standard PCs running WinAC RTX.

Siemens has released service packs and updates to address several vulnerabilities affecting the company’s SIMATIC STEP 7 and SIMATIC WinCC solutions.

Researchers identified a total of four security holes affecting SIMATIC STEP 7 (TIA Portal), an engineering application used to configure and program SIMATIC controllers and standard PCs running WinAC RTX.

One of the vulnerabilities, CVE-2015-1355, can be exploited by a local attacker to reconstruct device user passwords, which are stored in TIA portal project files using a weak hashing algorithm.

Another flaw, CVE-2015-1356, could allow an attacker to read and modify device user permissions by accessing unprotected project files. For an attack to work, a malicious actor needs to have access to the local system, and he must trick the victim into downloading modified project files to the device, Siemens said in its advisory.

These vulnerabilities affect SIMATIC STEP 7 (TIA Portal) V13 and previous versions. The issues have been addressed with the release of Service Pack 1 for V13.

Different security holes discovered by researchers affect all versions of SIMATIC STEP 7 (TIA Portal) V12 and V13 prior to V13 SP 1 Update 1. One of the bugs, CVE-2015-1601, can be leveraged by an attacker with access to the network path between the client and the server to intercept or modify Siemens industrial communications at port 102/TCP and conduct a man-in-the-middle(MitM) attack, SIemens said in a different advisory. A second issue, CVE-2015-1602, allows attackers with read access to TIA project files to reconstruct protection-level passwords or Web server passwords.

CVE-2015-1602 and CVE-2015-1601 have been fixed by Siemens with the release of Update 1 for SIMATIC STEP 7 (TIA Portal) V13 SP 1. The STEP 7 vulnerabilities have been identified and reported by researchers at Positive Technologies and Quarkslab.

Positive Technologies researchers have also uncovered two flaws in SIMATIC WinCC (TIA Portal), an engineering application used to configure and program SIMATIC Panels, SIMATIC industrial PCs, and standard PCs running WinCC Runtime Advanced or SCADA System WinCC Runtime Professional visualization software.

Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.

The more serious of the vulnerabilities, CVE-2014-4686, can be exploited by an attacker with network access to the WinCC RT Professional application to escalate privileges. The second bug, CVE-2015-1358, allows malicious hackers to reconstruct passwords by capturing network traffic from the product’s remote management module.

The security holes have been fixed with the release of Service Pack 1 for SIMATIC WinCC (TIA Portal) V13.

In January, Siemens released security updates for SCALANCE industrial switches, the SIMATIC S7-1200 PLC family, and the SIMATIC WinCC apps for iOS.

Written By

Eduard Kovacs (@EduardKovacs) is a managing editor at SecurityWeek. He worked as a high school IT teacher for two years before starting a career in journalism as Softpedia’s security news reporter. Eduard holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial informatics and a master’s degree in computer techniques applied in electrical engineering.

Click to comment

Trending

Daily Briefing Newsletter

Subscribe to the SecurityWeek Email Briefing to stay informed on the latest threats, trends, and technology, along with insightful columns from industry experts.

Join the session as we discuss the challenges and best practices for cybersecurity leaders managing cloud identities.

Register

SecurityWeek’s Ransomware Resilience and Recovery Summit helps businesses to plan, prepare, and recover from a ransomware incident.

Register

Expert Insights

Related Content

Vulnerabilities

Less than a week after announcing that it would suspended service indefinitely due to a conflict with an (at the time) unnamed security researcher...

Data Breaches

OpenAI has confirmed a ChatGPT data breach on the same day a security firm reported seeing the use of a component affected by an...

IoT Security

A group of seven security researchers have discovered numerous vulnerabilities in vehicles from 16 car makers, including bugs that allowed them to control car...

Vulnerabilities

A researcher at IOActive discovered that home security systems from SimpliSafe are plagued by a vulnerability that allows tech savvy burglars to remotely disable...

Risk Management

The supply chain threat is directly linked to attack surface management, but the supply chain must be known and understood before it can be...

Cybercrime

Patch Tuesday: Microsoft calls attention to a series of zero-day remote code execution attacks hitting its Office productivity suite.

Vulnerabilities

Patch Tuesday: Microsoft warns vulnerability (CVE-2023-23397) could lead to exploitation before an email is viewed in the Preview Pane.

Vulnerabilities

The latest Chrome update brings patches for eight vulnerabilities, including seven reported by external researchers.