A significant number of vulnerabilities have been found recently in products from China-based WECON, but the vendor has been slow to release patches.
WECON specializes in human-machine interfaces (HMIs), programmable logic controllers (PLCs), and industrial PCs. The company’s products are used all around the world, particularly in the critical manufacturing, energy, and water and wastewater sectors.
An advisory published recently by ICS-CERT reveals that researchers Mat Powell and Natnael Samson discovered several vulnerabilities in WECON’s PI Studio HMI software. The list includes a critical stack-based buffer overflow that allows remote code execution, a high severity out-of-bounds write bug that also allows code execution, and two medium severity information disclosure flaws.
According to ICS-CERT, WECON has confirmed the vulnerabilities, but it has yet to release any patches.
ICS-CERT has this year published four advisories describing vulnerabilities in WECON products, including a medium severity flaw in the company’s PLC Editor ladder logic software, and several high and medium severity bugs in LeviStudio applications.
Learn More About ICS Vulnerabilities at SecurityWeek’s 2018 ICS Cyber Security Conference
All the vulnerabilities for which ICS-CERT has published advisories were reported by Samson, Powell and other researchers through Trend Micro’s Zero Day Initiative (ZDI).
In fact, ZDI has already published 116 advisories in 2018 and over a dozen will be published in the upcoming period. However, it’s worth noting that ZDI typically publishes multiple advisories for a single CVE as each advisory covers a variation of the same vulnerability.
On the other hand, many of the ICS-CERT advisories and a vast majority of the advisories from ZDI were published before patches were made available by the vendor.
A majority of the security holes allow remote code execution, but since they are related to how the affected applications handle certain file types, the attacker would need to convince the targeted user to open a specially crafted file in order to trigger the exploit.
Related: Hackers Can Chain Multiple Flaws to Attack WAGO HMI Devices
Related: CredSSP Flaw Exposes Pepperl+Fuchs HMI Devices to Attacks
Related: Flaw in Schneider PLC Allows Significant Disruption to ICS

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.
More from Eduard Kovacs
- China’s Offensive Cyber Operations in Africa Support Soft Power Efforts
- SANS Survey Shows Drop in 2023 ICS/OT Security Budgets
- Apple Patches 3 Zero-Days Likely Exploited by Spyware Vendor to Hack iPhones
- Cisco to Acquire Splunk for $28 Billion
- Car Cybersecurity Study Shows Drop in Critical Vulnerabilities Over Past Decade
- Omron Patches PLC, Engineering Software Flaws Discovered During ICS Malware Analysis
- Intel Launches New Attestation Service as Part of Trust Authority Portfolio
- Atos Unify Vulnerabilities Could Allow Hackers to Backdoor Systems
Latest News
- Researchers Discover Attempt to Infect Leading Egyptian Opposition Politician With Predator Spyware
- In Other News: New Analysis of Snowden Files, Yubico Goes Public, Election Hacking
- China’s Offensive Cyber Operations in Africa Support Soft Power Efforts
- Air Canada Says Employee Information Accessed in Cyberattack
- BIND Updates Patch Two High-Severity DoS Vulnerabilities
- Faster Patching Pace Validates CISA’s KEV Catalog Initiative
- SANS Survey Shows Drop in 2023 ICS/OT Security Budgets
- Apple Patches 3 Zero-Days Likely Exploited by Spyware Vendor to Hack iPhones
