Serious Vulnerabilities Found in Schneider Electric’s ProClima Solution

The ProClima configuration utility developed by Schneider Electric is affected by several command injection vulnerabilities, the Industrial Control Systems Computer Emergency Response Team (ICS-CERT) reported on Tuesday.

ProClima is a thermal management software used in sectors such as energy, commercial facilities, and critical manufacturing, mainly in the United States and Europe. The solution processes thermal data, such as temperature and humidity, in order to define the right thermal management choice (ventilation, control, heating and cooling functions) for installed equipment.

The security holes, which according to Schneider Electric are ActiveX Control vulnerabilities, were discovered by researchers Ariele Caltabiano, Andrea Micalizzi, and Brian Gorenc, and reported through HP’s Zero Day Initiative (ZDI). Successful exploitation could allow a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code.

Three of the flaws (CVE-2014-8513, CVE-2014-8514, and CVE-2014-9188) are related to the MetaDraw ActiveX Control, a component designed for layout and manipulation. The “MDraw30.ocx” control can be initialized and called by malicious scripts potentially causing buffer overflows, which could lead to remote code execution, ICS-CERT said.

Two other vulnerabilities (CVE-2014-8511 and CVE-2014-8512) are related to the “Atx45.ocx” control, which can also be initialized and called by malicious scripts. This can cause a buffer overflow that could allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code. A CVSS v2 base score of 10.0 has been assigned to all the flaws.

The vulnerabilities can be exploited even by an attacker with a low skill level. However, ICS-CERT says there’s no evidence that they are being exploited in the wild.

The bugs affect version 6.0.1 and earlier of the ProClima software package. The issues have been addressed by Schneider Electric with the release of ProClima 6.1.7. Users are advised to install the latest release, but not before uninstalling the current version.

As always, ICS-CERT advises organizations that use ProClima to minimize the network exposure of control systems and devices, and isolate them from the Internet. For cases where remote access is required, the use of virtual private networks (VPNs) is highly recommended.

Since Schneider Electric’s products are widely deployed, they are targeted by many researchers who specialize in ICS security. In September, ICS-CERT reported that an expert had identified three security holes in the Schneider Electric SCADA Expert ClearSCADA solution. In October, a total of 22 Schneider Electric products were found to be vulnerable due to an issue in their Web human-machine interface (HMI).