Security Experts:

Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

SecurityWeekSecurityWeek

ICS/OT

Flaws in Rockwell Automation Product Expose Engineering Workstations to Attacks

Vulnerabilities discovered by researchers in Rockwell Automation’s FactoryTalk Linx product can allow attackers to compromise engineering workstations in industrial environments.

Vulnerabilities discovered by researchers in Rockwell Automation’s FactoryTalk Linx product can allow attackers to compromise engineering workstations in industrial environments.

FactoryTalk Linx, formerly known as RSLinx Enterprise, is a widely used product designed for connecting Allen Bradley programmable logic controllers (PLCs) to Rockwell applications, including for programming, data acquisition and HMI interaction.

Rockwell Automation and the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) last week published advisories to inform organizations using this product that researchers have identified three potentially serious vulnerabilities. Rockwell has released updates that should patch the flaws.FactoryTalk vulnerabilities

One of the vulnerabilities has been rated critical and described as a heap overflow bug that can allow a remote and unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary code by sending malicious port ranges.

Another vulnerability, rated high severity, affects the Ingress/Egress checks routine of FactoryTalk Linx, and it can be exploited by a remote, unauthenticated attacker for denial-of-service (DoS) attacks.

Learn more about vulnerabilities in industrial systems at SecurityWeek’s ICS Cyber Security Conference and SecurityWeek’s Security Summits virtual event series

The third security hole has been classified as medium severity and it can allow an unauthenticated attacker to obtain information that can be useful for bypassing the Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) memory protection feature.

The vulnerabilities were discovered by researchers at industrial cybersecurity firm Claroty. The company told SecurityWeek that the issues were reported to the vendor in April and they are related to a new CIP security feature of the FactoryTalk Linx solution.

“In order to exploit these vulnerabilities, attackers would need to have network access to the Engineering Workstation (EWS) machines. In many cases these machines are laptops, which means they are moving between networks and that makes them a good target for attackers,” Sharon Brizinov, research team lead at Claroty, said via email.

“In our research we were able to show how these three vulnerabilities could be linked together in order to achieve remote code execution while bypassing modern binary security mechanisms such as ASLR,” Brizinov explained. “By exploiting these vulnerabilities, attackers can completely take over the EWS where FactoryTalk Linx is installed. This is highly dangerous because attackers could affect and compromise the PLC program logic that is stored on the EWS before being transferred to the PLC.”

Related: Industrial Systems Can Be Hacked Remotely via VPN Vulnerabilities

Related: Rockwell Automation Patches Critical DoS/RCE Flaw in RSLinx Software

Related: Hackers Can Target Rockwell Industrial Software With Malicious EDS Files

Related: Encryption Vulnerabilities Allow Hackers to Take Control of Schneider Electric PLCs

Written By

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.

Click to comment

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 this webinar to learn best practices that organizations can use to improve both their resilience to new threats and their response times to incidents.

Register

Join this live webinar as we explore the potential security threats that can arise when third parties are granted access to a sensitive data or systems.

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...

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...

Vulnerabilities

Apple has released updates for macOS, iOS and Safari and they all include a WebKit patch for a zero-day vulnerability tracked as CVE-2023-23529.

Application Security

Drupal released updates that resolve four vulnerabilities in Drupal core and three plugins.

Vulnerabilities

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

Cloud Security

VMware vRealize Log Insight vulnerability allows an unauthenticated attacker to take full control of a target system.

IoT Security

Lexmark warns of a remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability impacting over 120 printer models, for which PoC code has been published.

Application Security

A CSRF vulnerability in the source control management (SCM) service Kudu could be exploited to achieve remote code execution in multiple Azure services.