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Schneider moves on ancient SCADA vuln

Patch those building systems

Schneider Electric has begun patching a hard-coded Ethernet credential vulnerability in its kit, a mere 18 months after it was discovered and published.

The original vulnerability, discovered by Rubén Santamarta and published in December 2011, provided access over Ethernet to the telnet, FTP and Windriver debug ports of Schneider Electric's Quantum Ethernet Modules.

The ICS-CERT advisory states that the vulnerabilities provide remote access and privilege escalation to an attacker, on SCADA systems used in energy, manufacturing and infrastructure environments.

Schneider Electric has now patched at least part of the vulnerability, issuing four patches that remove the Telnet and Windriver services from the affected BMXNOE01x0 and 140NOE771x1 module versions. There's also a patch to disable FTP and HTTP services on some modules.

Further patches will be required to carry the fixes across all devices.

Santamarta's original discovery of the hard-coded credentials was made quite simply: he downloaded the Schneider Electric firmware and took a look.

The hard-coded credentials were egregious: some were provided in the scripts used for firmware updates, and another account identified inside a Java comms script. Other admin-level accounts were hidden deeper in the code with hashed passwords that Santamarta was able to crack. ®

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