Vulnerabilities > CVE-2022-38465 - Insufficiently Protected Credentials vulnerability in Siemens products
Summary
A vulnerability has been identified in SIMATIC Drive Controller family (All versions < V2.9.2), SIMATIC ET 200SP Open Controller CPU 1515SP PC (incl. SIPLUS variants) (All versions), SIMATIC ET 200SP Open Controller CPU 1515SP PC2 (incl. SIPLUS variants) (All versions < V21.9), SIMATIC S7-1200 CPU family (incl. SIPLUS variants) (All versions < V4.5.0), SIMATIC S7-1500 CPU family (incl. related ET200 CPUs and SIPLUS variants) (All versions < V2.9.2), SIMATIC S7-1500 Software Controller (All versions < V21.9), SIMATIC S7-PLCSIM Advanced (All versions < V4.0), SINUMERIK MC (All versions < V6.21), SINUMERIK ONE (All versions < V6.21). Affected products protect the built-in global private key in a way that cannot be considered sufficient any longer. The key is used for the legacy protection of confidential configuration data and the legacy PG/PC and HMI communication. This could allow attackers to discover the private key of a CPU product family by an offline attack against a single CPU of the family. Attackers could then use this knowledge to extract confidential configuration data from projects that are protected by that key or to perform attacks against legacy PG/PC and HMI communication.
Vulnerable Configurations
Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE)
Common Attack Pattern Enumeration and Classification (CAPEC)
- Session Sidejacking Session sidejacking takes advantage of an unencrypted communication channel between a victim and target system. The attacker sniffs traffic on a network looking for session tokens in unencrypted traffic. Once a session token is captured, the attacker performs malicious actions by using the stolen token with the targeted application to impersonate the victim. This attack is a specific method of session hijacking, which is exploiting a valid session token to gain unauthorized access to a target system or information. Other methods to perform a session hijacking are session fixation, cross-site scripting, or compromising a user or server machine and stealing the session token.
- Lifting credential(s)/key material embedded in client distributions (thick or thin) An attacker examines a target application's code or configuration files to find credential or key material that has been embedded within the application or its files. Many services require authentication with their users for the various purposes including billing, access control or attribution. Some client applications store the user's authentication credentials or keys to accelerate the login process. Some clients may have built-in keys or credentials (in which case the server is authenticating with the client, rather than the user). If the attacker is able to locate where this information is stored, they may be able to retrieve these credentials. The attacker could then use these stolen credentials to impersonate the user or client, respectively, in interactions with the service or use stolen keys to eavesdrop on nominally secure communications between the client and server.
- Password Recovery Exploitation An attacker may take advantage of the application feature to help users recover their forgotten passwords in order to gain access into the system with the same privileges as the original user. Generally password recovery schemes tend to be weak and insecure. Most of them use only one security question . For instance, mother's maiden name tends to be a fairly popular one. Unfortunately in many cases this information is not very hard to find, especially if the attacker knows the legitimate user. These generic security questions are also re-used across many applications, thus making them even more insecure. An attacker could for instance overhear a coworker talking to a bank representative at the work place and supplying their mother's maiden name for verification purposes. An attacker can then try to log in into one of the victim's accounts, click on "forgot password" and there is a good chance that the security question there will be to provide mother's maiden name. A weak password recovery scheme totally undermines the effectiveness of a strong password scheme.