Siemens has released service packs and updates to address several vulnerabilities affecting the company’s SIMATIC STEP 7 and SIMATIC WinCC solutions.
Researchers identified a total of four security holes affecting SIMATIC STEP 7 (TIA Portal), an engineering application used to configure and program SIMATIC controllers and standard PCs running WinAC RTX.
One of the vulnerabilities, CVE-2015-1355, can be exploited by a local attacker to reconstruct device user passwords, which are stored in TIA portal project files using a weak hashing algorithm.
Another flaw, CVE-2015-1356, could allow an attacker to read and modify device user permissions by accessing unprotected project files. For an attack to work, a malicious actor needs to have access to the local system, and he must trick the victim into downloading modified project files to the device, Siemens said in its advisory.
These vulnerabilities affect SIMATIC STEP 7 (TIA Portal) V13 and previous versions. The issues have been addressed with the release of Service Pack 1 for V13.
Different security holes discovered by researchers affect all versions of SIMATIC STEP 7 (TIA Portal) V12 and V13 prior to V13 SP 1 Update 1. One of the bugs, CVE-2015-1601, can be leveraged by an attacker with access to the network path between the client and the server to intercept or modify Siemens industrial communications at port 102/TCP and conduct a man-in-the-middle(MitM) attack, SIemens said in a different advisory. A second issue, CVE-2015-1602, allows attackers with read access to TIA project files to reconstruct protection-level passwords or Web server passwords.
CVE-2015-1602 and CVE-2015-1601 have been fixed by Siemens with the release of Update 1 for SIMATIC STEP 7 (TIA Portal) V13 SP 1. The STEP 7 vulnerabilities have been identified and reported by researchers at Positive Technologies and Quarkslab.
Positive Technologies researchers have also uncovered two flaws in SIMATIC WinCC (TIA Portal), an engineering application used to configure and program SIMATIC Panels, SIMATIC industrial PCs, and standard PCs running WinCC Runtime Advanced or SCADA System WinCC Runtime Professional visualization software.
The more serious of the vulnerabilities, CVE-2014-4686, can be exploited by an attacker with network access to the WinCC RT Professional application to escalate privileges. The second bug, CVE-2015-1358, allows malicious hackers to reconstruct passwords by capturing network traffic from the product’s remote management module.
The security holes have been fixed with the release of Service Pack 1 for SIMATIC WinCC (TIA Portal) V13.
In January, Siemens released security updates for SCALANCE industrial switches, the SIMATIC S7-1200 PLC family, and the SIMATIC WinCC apps for iOS.
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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