A couple of vulnerabilities affecting the TwinCAT PLC runtime from Beckhoff can be exploited for denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, which may be triggered by malicious actors or by accident.
Beckhoff is a Germany-based company that provides automation solutions, including industrial PCs, I/O and fieldbus components, drive technology, and automation software. The firm says its products are used in over 75 countries around the world. Its TwinCAT system is designed to turn a Windows PC into a programmable logic controller (PLC).
A researcher from Rapid7 has discovered that TwinCAT is affected by two DoS vulnerabilities, both classified “high severity.”
One of them, tracked as CVE-2019-5637, exists when TwinCAT is configured to use a Profinet driver. Profinet uses Discovery and Configuration Protocol (DCP) requests when discovering and configuring devices during the initial setup, and Rapid7 researcher Andreas Galauner found that specially crafted DCP packets sent to the TwinCAT device can cause a DoS condition. Following a successful attack, the device needs to be restarted in order to resume operation.
The second vulnerability, CVE-2019-5636, is related to a protocol named ADS, which is used for internal communications between components. Specially crafted packets can cause the service to enter a DoS condition, which prevents PLCs from being discoverable on the network.
Rapid7 has pointed out that the types of packets that can cause the DoS condition are typically sent out by nmap and possibly other network scanners, which means that the devices can be temporarily disrupted by legitimate network scanning or vulnerability management activities.
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