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5 MIN READ

Commentary



THE OVERLOOKED PROBLEM OF 'N-DAY' VULNERABILITIES

N-days -- or known vulnerabilities -- are a goldmine for attackers of industrial
control systems. It's time for a new defense strategy.
Ang Cui
Founder & CEO, Red Balloon Security
March 26, 2018
PDF


Security Researcher Joseph Pantoga contributed to this article.



Zero-day attacks tend to steal the spotlight when it comes to cybersecurity
threats, but it is actually the known vulnerability — the "N-day" — that poses a
much larger problem for many organizations and particularly those in the
industrial sectors.

Whereas zero-days are a class of vulnerability that is unknown to a software
developer or hardware manufacturer, an N-day is a flaw that is already publicly
known but may or may not have a security patch available. There are countless
known vulnerabilities in existence today, and many large commercial and
governmental entities will find they have significant exposure within their
broad network footprints.

However, the problem is far more acute for organizations that rely on industrial
control systems (ICS) such as the energy, manufacturing, and infrastructure
sectors. This is because ICS equipment can be extremely difficult to update and
patch. To make matters worse, ICS firmware is often developed with insufficient
built-in security controls, and product manufacturers can be slow to fix newly
discovered vulnerabilities and threats.



For more than a year, our team analyzed unpatched N-day vulnerabilities in the
firmware of widely used ICS devices in order to gain a better understanding of
the problem. Some of these findings were recently presented at the S4x18
security conference in Miami. We found that N-days are extremely common in the
ICS environment. Nearly all the operators who read this article are likely to
have numerous N-days in their systems.



N-Days vs. Zero-Days
N-day vulnerabilities are a goldmine for attackers because the hard work has
already been done. In certain cases, active exploits may already exist and be
readily available from public disclosure documents. Compare this with zero-days,
which are time-consuming and expensive to find and exploit — the reason why
their use is declining among criminal groups.        .

While N-days pose a threat to any large network, industrial users are at an
especially high risk because of specific circumstances unique to those
environments:


 1. Systems must always be available. 
 2. No standardization. For example, in an ICS, as opposed to a standard
    computing environment, patching is often a manual proprietary process that
    requires unique software and knowledge for each vendor. 
 3. Patches rarely propagate between vendors that use shared code. This
    highlights an example we outlined at S4, where a vulnerability was reported
    to a vendor in the telecom sector, was patched by the software vendor
    (Intel/Windriver), but patches were not applied by a number of  other large
    vendors in ICS. 
 4. Extended lifetime. Systems are typically deployed in the field for over a
    decade and well past their support period. Vendors who desire to sell new
    products are disincentivized to routinely patch and support older products
    with security updates, even if they are still commonly found in the field.

Real-World Cases Illustrate the Risks
The industry has already seen a number of attacks on industrial targets that
have exploited N-day vulnerabilities in ICS devices and protocols. Some examples
include: 

 * CrashOverride or Industroyer: This malware was used in a December 2016
   attack that disrupted operations at a Ukrainian electrical transmission
   substation. It exploited the known CVE-2015-5374 Denial of Service condition
   to the Siemens SIPROTEC relays.
 * TRITON or HatMan: Discovered in 2017, the ICS malware targets Schneider
   Electric's Triconex Safety Instrumented System (SIS) controllers' emergency
   shutdown capability.
 * BlackEnergy: This malware contained exploits for specific types of HMI
   applications, including Siemens SIMATIC, GE CIMPLICITY, and Advantech
   WebAccess. 

High-Risk Vulnerabilities
Many of the N-days we discovered in ICS firmware are critical in nature and
could allow a hacker to gain remote access and total control over parts of an
industrial operator's network or facility. These N-days could allow attackers to
replicate the effects of CrashOverride, TRITON, BlackEnergy, or even Stuxnet
much more easily, and at a much wider scale.

For example, in our research into the VxWorks 5.5.1 vulnerability (discussed
above), we found that every major manufacturer had a product that remains
unpatched against this N-day. In no case was this vulnerability listed for the
individual ICS products, so vendors may not even know these vulnerabilities
exist. The vulnerabilities can be exploited for such malicious purposes as
manipulating settings and controls, physically damaging or destroying equipment,
disrupting key operations, and stealing sensitive information.

Due to the large number of vulnerabilities we discovered and the long lead time
on ICS patching (as well as the low patch penetration rate), we decided not to
disclose individual vulnerabilities against named devices for fear of arming
attackers while device operators would be unable to respond.

Patching Is Not the Answer
ICS N-days are not an easy problem to fix. Solutions are limited by technical
complications and a slow-to-act supply chain. Nonetheless, there is a lot the
industry can do to address the problem.

To start, the current reactive approach of patching known vulnerabilities is no
longer tenable. Every component of the ICS environment should have strong
security baked into the software, firmware, and hardware from the very start in
order to lower the overall risk of N-days and other problems, and to mitigate or
prevent damage from their exploitation.

The best solutions will combine intrusion detection and mitigation techniques to
protect against known and unknown attacks without relying on continuous updates.
By and large, these features do not exist, so it is incumbent upon manufacturers
to develop or source this technology as quickly as possible.

Related Content:

 * The Case for Integrating Physical Security & Cybersecurity
 * Anatomy of an Attack on the Industrial IoT
 * Zero-Day Attacks Major Concern in Hybrid Cloud
 * 7 Key Stats that Size Up the Cybercrime Deluge



Join Dark Reading LIVE for two cybersecurity summits at Interop ITX. Learn from
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