Water Tank Management System Used Worldwide Has Unpatched Security Hole

A water tank management system used by organizations worldwide is affected by a critical vulnerability that can be exploited remotely and the vendor does not appear to want to patch it.

The affected product is made by the water and energy unit of Irish building materials company Kingspan. The Kingspan TMS300 CS water tank management system provides tank level information via a screen, web server, application, online portal or email. It features wired and wireless multi-tank level measurements, alarms, and internet or local network connectivity.

According to an advisory published this week by CISA, researcher Maxim Rupp discovered that the product is affected by a critical vulnerability caused by the lack of properly implemented access control rules, which allows an unauthenticated attacker to view or modify the device’s settings.

The researcher discovered that an attacker can access the device’s settings without authenticating, simply by navigating to specific URLs. These URLs can be identified by browsing the web interface or via a brute force attack, Rupp told SecurityWeek.

The flaw has been assigned the CVE identifier CVE-2022-2757 and a CVSS score of 9.8.

These devices can be configured to be accessible from the internet. An attacker can exploit the security hole from anywhere as long as they have access to the device’s web interface, Rupp explained.

Based on the product’s documentation, Rupp said an attacker could change various settings after exploiting this vulnerability, including ones related to sensors, tank details, and alarm thresholds.

It appears that the exposed settings could allow a hacker to cause some disruption in the targeted organization.

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According to CISA, the impacted product is used worldwide in the water and wastewater systems sector. The agency says the vulnerability remains unpatched.

“Kingspan has not responded to requests to work with CISA to mitigate these vulnerabilities. Users of the affected product are encouraged to contact Kingspan customer support for additional information,” CISA said.

SecurityWeek has also reached out to the company for comment, but received no response.

CISA has provided some general recommendations for reducing the risk posed by these types of vulnerabilities.

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