Power management solutions provider Eaton has released patches for its Intelligent Power Manager (IPM) software to address several potentially serious vulnerabilities, including ones that researchers say could allow hackers to disrupt power supply.
Eaton’s IPM solution is designed to ensure system uptime and data integrity by allowing organizations to remotely monitor, manage and control the uninterruptible power supply (UPS) devices on their network.
According to security advisories published this month by Eaton and the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the IPM product is affected by six high-severity vulnerabilities that can be exploited for SQL injection, command execution, deleting arbitrary files, uploading arbitrary files, and remote code execution.
While some of the vulnerabilities can only be exploited by an authenticated attacker, others can be exploited without authentication, including for arbitrary code execution.
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Amir Preminger, VP of research at industrial cybersecurity firm Claroty, who has been credited by Eaton for reporting the six vulnerabilities, told SecurityWeek that the issues were identified in a web server interface of the IPM software that enables users to configure the product. This web server is typically accessible from the local network and is not hosted on public-facing servers.
“The goal of the Eaton IPM software is to enable users to manage their UPS system. By exploiting a server using this software, an attacker can disrupt the UPS operations and therefore disrupt the power supply to equipment that relies on the UPS as its power source,” Preminger explained.
He added, “The bottom line is that this product should be patched, since a few of the CVEs are pre-auth and could be exploited by adversaries without prior knowledge about the server setup.”
The security holes impact Eaton IPM and Intelligent Power Manager Virtual Appliance (IPM VA) running versions prior to 1.69, and Intelligent Power Protector (IPP) running versions prior to 1.68. Versions 1.69 and 1.68 address the vulnerabilities. Organizations can also block ports 4679 and 4680 to prevent exploitation.
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