Operational Technology | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Three security vulnerabilities have been disclosed in operational technology (OT) products from Wago and Schneider Electric. The flaws, per Forescout, are part of a  broader   set  of  shortcomings  collectively called  OT:ICEFALL , which now comprises a total of 61 issues spanning 13 different vendors. "OT:ICEFALL demonstrates the need for tighter scrutiny of, and improvements to, processes related to secure design, patching and testing in OT device vendors," the company  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. The most severe of the flaws is  CVE-2022-46680  (CVSS score: 8.8), which concerns the plaintext transmission of credentials in the ION/TCP protocol used by power meters from Schneider Electric. Successful exploitation of the bug could enable threat actors to gain control of vulnerable devices. It's worth noting that CVE-2022-46680 is one among the 56 flaws  originally unearthed  by Forescout in June 2022. The other two new security holes ( CVE-2023

Attacks on critical infrastructure and other OT systems are on the rise as digital transformation and OT/IT convergence continue to accelerate. Water treatment facilities, energy providers, factories, and chemical plants — the infrastructure that undergirds our daily lives could all be at risk. Disrupting or manipulating OT systems stands to pose real physical harm to citizens, environments, and economies. Yet the landscape of OT security tools is far less developed than its information technology (IT) counterpart. According to a recent  report from Takepoint Research and Cyolo , there is a notable lack of confidence in the tools commonly used to secure remote access to industrial environments.  Figure 1: New research reveals a large gap across industries between the level of concern about security risks and the level of confidence in existing solutions for industrial secure remote access (I-SRA). The traditional security strategy of industrial environments was isolation – isolatio

Want to know what's the latest and greatest in SecOps for 2024? Gartner's recently released Hype Cycle for Security Operations report takes important steps to organize and mature the domain of Continuous Threat Exposure Management, aka CTEM. Three categories within this domain are included in this year's report: Threat Exposure Management, Exposure Assessment Platforms (EAP), and Adversarial Exposure Validation (AEV). These category definitions are aimed at providing some structure to the evolving landscape of exposure management technologies. Pentera, listed as a sample vendor in the newly defined AEV category, is playing a pivotal role in increasing the adoption of CTEM, with a focus on security validation. Following is our take on the CTEM related product categories and what they mean for enterprise security leaders. The Industry is Maturing CTEM, coined by Gartner in 2022, presents a structural approach for continuously assessing, prioritizing, validating, and remediating expo

Why is Visibility into OT Environments Crucial? The significance of Operational Technology (OT) for businesses is undeniable as the OT sector flourishes alongside the already thriving IT sector. OT includes industrial control systems, manufacturing equipment, and devices that oversee and manage industrial environments and critical infrastructures. In recent years, adversaries have recognized the lack of detection and protection in many industrial systems and are actively exploiting these vulnerabilities. In response, IT security leaders have become more aware of the need to protect their OT environments with security monitoring and response capabilities. This development was accelerated by severe past cyber incidents targeting critical OT environments and even causing physical damage to infrastructures. Given the pivotal role these systems play in business operations and modern society, ensuring their security is of utmost importance. The underlying trend is clear: OT and IoT networ

Researchers have disclosed details of three new security vulnerabilities affecting operational technology (OT) products from CODESYS and Festo that could lead to source code tampering and denial-of-service (DoS). The vulnerabilities, reported by Forescout Vedere Labs, are the latest in a long list of flaws collectively tracked under the name  OT:ICEFALL . "These issues exemplify either an insecure-by-design approach — which was usual at the time the products were launched – where manufacturers include dangerous functions that can be accessed with no authentication or a subpar implementation of security controls, such as cryptography," the researchers  said . The most critical of the flaws is  CVE-2022-3270  (CVSS score: 9.8), a critical vulnerability that affects Festo automation controllers using the Festo Generic Multicast (FGMC) protocol to reboot the devices without requiring any authentication and cause a denial of service (DoS) condition. Another DoS shortcoming i

Not too long ago, there was a clear separation between the operational technology (OT) that drives the physical functions of a company – on the factory floor, for example – and the information technology (IT) that manages a company's data to enable management and planning.  As IT assets became increasingly connected to the outside world via the internet, OT remained isolated from IT – and the rest of the world. However, the spread of Industrial IoT (IIoT) as well as the need for constant monitoring and tracking information from manufacturing and assembly lines mean the connection between IT and OT systems has greatly expanded. OT is no longer isolated. OT is now just as exposed to the outside world as IT is. What does this mean for OT security, where hard-to-access devices needed for 24/7 production are difficult to patch? Let's take a look. The Air Gap Is Gone Not so long ago, any data exchange between IT and OT operated via a "sneaker net." An operator would p

Cybersecurity researchers have elaborated a novel attack technique that weaponizes programmable logic controllers ( PLCs ) to gain an initial foothold in engineering workstations and subsequently invade the operational technology (OT) networks. Dubbed " Evil PLC " attack by industrial security firm Claroty, the issue impacts engineering workstation software from Rockwell Automation, Schneider Electric, GE, B&R, Xinje, OVARRO, and Emerson. Programmable logic controllers are a crucial component of industrial devices that control manufacturing processes in critical infrastructure sectors. PLCs, besides orchestrating the automation tasks, are also configured to start and stop processes and generate alarms. It's hence not surprising that the entrenched access provided by PLCs have made the machines a focus of sophisticated attacks for more than a decade, starting from  Stuxnet to PIPEDREAM  (aka INCONTROLLER), with the goal of causing physical disruptions.  "The

Nearly five dozen security vulnerabilities have been disclosed in devices from 10 operational technology (OT) vendors due to what researchers call are "insecure-by-design practices." Collectively dubbed  OT:ICEFALL  by Forescout, the 56 issues span as many as 26 device models from Bently Nevada, Emerson, Honeywell, JTEKT, Motorola, Omron, Phoenix Contact, Siemens, and Yokogawa. "Exploiting these vulnerabilities, attackers with network access to a target device could remotely execute code, change the logic, files or firmware of OT devices, bypass authentication, compromise credentials, cause denials of service or have a variety of operational impacts," the company said in a technical report. These vulnerabilities could have disastrous consequences considering the impacted products are widely employed in critical infrastructure industries such as oil and gas, chemical, nuclear, power generation and distribution, manufacturing, water treatment and distribution, min