Vulnerabilities

Researcher Discloses Zero-Day Flaws in Advantech WebAccess

A researcher has published proof-of-concept (PoC) code for a total of seven zero-day vulnerabilities affecting Advantech’s WebAccess software.

Eduard Kovacs

September 8, 2015

A researcher has published proof-of-concept (PoC) code for a total of seven zero-day vulnerabilities affecting Advantech’s WebAccess software.

Advantech WebAccess, formerly known as BroadWin WebAccess, is a browser-based software package for human-machine interfaces (HMI) and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems. The solution, part of the Taiwan-based company’s industrial automation portfolio, is used in the energy, critical manufacturing, and commercial and government facilities sectors across the world.

According to security researcher Praveen Darshanam, the AspVCObj.dll component in Advantech WebAccess 8.0 and earlier is plagued by seven stack-based buffer overflow vulnerabilities that can be exploited for remote code execution (CVE-2014-9208).

“Attackers can execute code remotely by passing a maliciously crafted string to ConvToSafeArray API in ASPVCOBJLib.AspDataDriven ActiveX,” the researcher explained in an advisory published last week.

Darshanam told SecurityWeek that it’s not difficult for malicious actors to exploit the vulnerabilities. All they need to do is set up an HTML page containing malicious code and trick the targeted user into accessing that page.

The expert says the vulnerabilities were first reported to Advantech in December 2014. The disclosure of the flaws to the vendor was coordinated through the Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team (ICS-CERT).

The vendor reportedly told ICS-CERT that it would fix the vulnerabilities in April, but the researcher says the issues remain unpatched. Advantech has not responded to SecurityWeek’s request for comment by the time of publication.

Over the past years, ICS-CERT has published a dozen advisories detailing vulnerabilities in Advantech products. Seven of those advisories describe security holes affecting WebAccess, including cross-site scripting (XSS), SQL injection, information leakage, authentication, buffer overflow, cross-site request forgery (CSRF), and command injection issues.

Advantech WebAccess has also been targeted in a long-running BlackEnergy campaign targeting ICS environments.

Related Reading: Learn More at the ICS Cyber Security Conference

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.

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