FATEK Automation Designer Memory Corruption Vulnerabilities

OVERVIEW

Ariele Caltabiano (kimiya) working with Trend Micro’s Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) has identified a heap memory corruption and two stack buffer overflow vulnerabilities in Fatek’s Automation PM and FV Designer applications. Fatek has not produced an update to mitigate these vulnerabilities. ZDI has coordinated with NCCIC/ICS-CERT. ZDI has published the PM Designer vulnerability.

These vulnerabilities could be exploited remotely.

AFFECTED PRODUCTS

The following FATEK Automation products are affected:

• Automation PM Designer V3 Version 2.1.2.2, and
• Automation FV Designer Version 1.2.8.0

IMPACT

Successful exploitation of the reported vulnerabilities may allow an attacker to perform a number of malicious actions including denial of service and arbitrary code execution.

Impact to individual organizations depends on many factors that are unique to each organization. ICS-CERT recommends that organizations evaluate the impact of these vulnerabilities based on their operational environment, architecture, and product implementation.

BACKGROUND

Fatek is a Taiwan-based company that maintains distribution offices in several countries around the world, including the US, UK, Netherlands, Italy, India, Germany, France, Czech Republic, China, and Australia.

The affected products, Automation PM Designer and Automation FV Designer, are HMI programming software. According to Fatek, these products are deployed across several sectors including Commercial Facilities and Critical Manufacturing. Fatek estimates that these products are used primarily in Europe and Asia.

VULNERABILITY CHARACTERIZATION

VULNERABILITY OVERVIEW

Sending additional valid packets could allow the attacker to cause a crash or to execute arbitrary code.

CVE-2016-5796NVD, http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2016-5796, NIST uses this advisory to create the CVE web site report. This web site will be active sometime after publication of this advisory. has been assigned to this vulnerability. A CVSS v3 base score of 6.5 has been assigned; the CVSS vector string is (AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H).CVSS Calculator, https://www.first.org/cvss/calculator/3.0#CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H, web site last accessed October 13, 2016.

By sending additional valid packets, an attacker could trigger an overflow and cause a crash.

CVE-2016-5798NVD, http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2016-5798 , NIST uses this advisory to create the CVE web site report. This web site will be active sometime after publication of this advisory. has been assigned to this vulnerability. A CVSS v3 base score of 7.5 has been assigned; the CVSS vector string is (AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H).CVSS Calculator, https://www.first.org/cvss/calculator/3.0#CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H, web site last accessed October 13, 2016.

VULNERABILITY DETAILS

EXPLOITABILITY

These vulnerabilities could be exploited remotely.

EXISTENCE OF EXPLOIT

No known public exploits specifically target these vulnerabilities.

DIFFICULTY

An attacker with a low skill would be able to exploit these vulnerabilities.

MITIGATION

FATEK Automation has not responded to requests to work with ICS-CERT to mitigate these vulnerabilities.

ZDI has published the PM Designer vulnerability. It is available at:

http://www.zerodayinitiative.com/advisories/ZDI-16-525/.

ICS-CERT recommends that users take defensive measures to minimize the risk of exploitation of these vulnerabilities. Specifically, users should:

• Minimize network exposure for all control system devices and/or systems, and ensure that they are not accessible from the Internet.
• Locate control system networks and remote devices behind firewalls, and isolate them from the business network.
• When remote access is required, use secure methods, such as Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), recognizing that VPNs may have vulnerabilities and should be updated to the most current version available. Also recognize that VPN is only as secure as the connected devices.

ICS-CERT reminds organizations to perform proper impact analysis and risk assessment prior to deploying defensive measures.

ICS-CERT also provides a section for control systems security recommended practices on the ICS-CERT web page at: http://ics-cert.us-cert.gov/content/recommended-practices. Several recommended practices are available for reading and download, including Improving Industrial Control Systems Cybersecurity with Defense-in-Depth Strategies.

Additional mitigation guidance and recommended practices are publicly available in the ICS‑CERT Technical Information Paper, ICS-TIP-12-146-01B--Targeted Cyber Intrusion Detection and Mitigation Strategies, that is available for download from the ICS-CERT web site (http://ics-cert.us-cert.gov/).

Organizations observing any suspected malicious activity should follow their established internal procedures and report their findings to ICS-CERT for tracking and correlation against other incidents.