Honeywell Uniformance PHD Denial Of Service (Update A)

OVERVIEW

This updated advisory is a follow-up to the original advisory titled ICSA-16-070-02 Honeywell Uniformance PHD Denial of Service that was published April 12, 2016, on the NCCIC/ICS-CERT web site.

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Honeywell has identified a buffer overflow vulnerability resulting in a denial-of-service condition in the Uniformance Process History Database (PHD).

Additional affected processes were identified by Lei ChengLin (Z-One) from Fengtai Technologies’ (Beijing) Security Research Team as also being vulnerable. Honeywell has produced a patch to mitigate this vulnerability.

This vulnerability could be exploited remotely.

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AFFECTED PRODUCTS

Honeywell reports that the vulnerability affects the following versions:

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• Uniformance PHD, versions prior to R310.1.1.2;
• Uniformance PHD, versions prior to R320.1.0.2; and
• Uniformance PHD, versions prior to R321.1.1.

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IMPACT

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Successful exploitation of this vulnerability may cause processes running on the affected device to become unresponsive, resulting in a denial-of-service condition.

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

BACKGROUND

Honeywell is a US-based company that maintains offices worldwide.

The affected products, Uniformance PHD, are used together with DCS to provide a historian for engineering and business analytics. According to Honeywell, Uniformance PHD products are deployed across several sectors including Chemical, Critical Manufacturing, Energy, and Water and Wastewater Systems. Honeywell estimates that these products are used worldwide.

VULNERABILITY OVERVIEW

STACK-BASED BUFFER OVERFLOWCWE-121: Stack-based Buffer Overflow, http://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/121.html, web site last accessed April 12, 2016.

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A buffer overflow vulnerability was discovered in Network.dll that can cause these processes to become unresponsive requiring the affected device to be restarted. The Network.dll is used in the following files: RDISERVER, RAPIServer, apiserver, and UDBServer.

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CVE-2016-2280NVD, http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2016-2280, web site last accessed July 12, 2016. 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 April 12, 2016.

VULNERABILITY DETAILS

EXPLOITABILITY

This vulnerability could be exploited remotely.

EXISTENCE OF EXPLOIT

No known public exploits specifically target this vulnerability.

DIFFICULTY

An attacker with a low skill would be able to exploit this vulnerability.

MITIGATION

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Honeywell has released a new version of the Network.dll, which mitigates the identified buffer overflow vulnerability. The new version of the Network.dll has been made available in the following Uniformance PHD versions: R310.1.1.2, R320.1.0.2, and R321.1.1.

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For more information about this vulnerability and how to apply the patches, please see Honeywell’s Security Notification SN 2016-01-27 under the support tab at the following web page:

https://www.honeywellprocess.com

ICS-CERT recommends, as quality assurance, that users test the update in a test development environment that reflects their production environment prior to installation. In addition, 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 athttp://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.