ICS/OT

Code Execution, DoS Flaws Patched in Advantech WebAccess

Several serious vulnerabilities have been patched by Taiwan-based industrial automation company Advantech in its WebAccess SCADA software.

Eduard Kovacs

April 3, 2019

Several serious vulnerabilities have been patched by Taiwan-based industrial automation company Advantech in its WebAccess SCADA software.

Advantech WebAccess is a browser-based software package for human-machine interfaces (HMI) and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems. The product has been used mainly in the United States, Europe and East Asia, in sectors such as critical manufacturing, energy, and water and wastewater.

According to an advisory published this week by ICS-CERT, researchers discovered that WebAccess is affected by three types of vulnerabilities, including two remote code execution flaws rated “critical” and one denial-of-service (DoS) bug classified as “high severity.”

Learn More About ICS Flaws at SecurityWeek’s 2019 ICS Cyber Security Conference

The security holes were reported by researchers to Advantech through Trend Micro’s Zero Day Initiative (ZDI). The company has published two dozen advisories describing each variation of the three vulnerabilities.

According to ZDI, the code execution flaws, tracked as CVE-2019-6552 and CVE-2019-6550, can be exploited by an unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary code with administrator privileges. The vulnerabilities exist in different executable files, but they all appear to be related to the same resource in the webvrpcs process.

“The issue results from the lack of proper validation of the length of user-supplied data prior to copying it to a fixed-length stack-based buffer,” ZDI’s advisories explain.

As for the DoS flaw, identified as CVE-2019-6554, it affects a file named UninstallWA.exe and the same webvrpcs process. An unauthenticated attacker can exploit the weakness to uninstall the application and create a DoS condition on the system.

The vulnerabilities were reported to Advantech in January and ICS-CERT says they were patched with the release of version 8.4.0 of WebAccess.

Written By Eduard Kovacs

Eduard Kovacs (@EduardKovacs) is a contributing 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.

Latest News

Click to comment

Mapping Threat Intelligence to the NIST Compliance Framework Part 2

How threat intelligence is critical when justifying budget for GRC personnel, and for threat intelligence, incident response, security operations and CISO buyers.

Landon Winkelvoss

Password Dependency: How to Break the Cycle

Hackers rarely hack in anymore. They log in using stolen, weak, default, or otherwise compromised credentials. That’s why it’s so critical to break the password dependency cycle. But how can this be done?

Torsten George

Why CISOs Make Great Board Members

Cybersecurity-related risk is a top concern, so boards need to know they have the proper oversight in place. Even as first-timers, successful CISOs make for successful board members.

Galina Antova

A Change in Mindset: From a Threat-based to Risk-based Approach to Security

A threat-based approach to security often focuses on a checklist to meet industry requirements but overlooked the key component of security: reducing risk.

Marie Hattar

Secrets to a Good Security Webinar or Conference Presentation

Tips for making a presentation that will help improve the state of security programs and reflect favorably on the presenters and their companies

Joshua Goldfarb

CISO Strategy

Why CISOs Make Great Board Members

Cybersecurity-related risk is a top concern, so boards need to know they have the proper oversight in place. Even as first-timers, successful CISOs make...

Galina Antova6 days ago