Fuji's Electric V-Server is in some heap of trouble.

An advisory from ICS-CERT enumerates several code vulnerabilities in the industrial control system's (ICS) data collection and management service. V-Server VPR 4.0.3.0, as well as prior versions, are reported to be affected.

The vulnerabilities include use-after-free, untrusted pointer dereference, heap-based buffer overflow, out-of-bounds write, integer underflow, out-of-bounds read and stack-based buffer overflow.

(Source: ENISA)

These numerous vulnerabilities could leads to distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks or possible information disclosure to an attacker.

Boy howdy, some heap of trouble indeed.

ICS-CERT also warned that public exploits are available for some of the vulnerabilities.

The CVSS base score for the faults has been calculated as 7.3 -- a "high severity" rating. This means they are important, but not deemed immediately critical to operations.

However, Fuji says that all the vulnerabilities have been patched with the release of version 4.0.4.0.

The first reporting of the problem is credited to Trend Micro's Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) with the research conducted by Steven Seeley of Source Incite.

In the advisory published by ZDI, researchers note that first disclosure to the manufacturer was sent in March. The coordinated public release of advisory was released September 12.

The advisory notes that the problem "exist within the parsing of a VPR file." With the bad parsing, either the lack of validating the existence of an object prior to performing operations on that object, or the lack of proper validation for user-supplied data causes some of the issues.

An additional advisory from ICS-CERT describes a high severity buffer overflow, which affects V-Server Lite. The problem is open to exportation for code execution -- leading to a DDoS condition or information leakage once again -- using specially crafted project files.

Even with the new software installed, the National Cybersecurity & Communications Integration Center (NCCIC) recommends users take defensive measures to minimize the risk of exploitation of this vulnerability.

Specifically, the following concepts should be considered when looking at the ICS system as a whole:

• Minimize network exposure for all control system devices 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, it must be recognized that a VPN is only as secure as the connected devices.

The security team must always be aware how easy it is to get to ICS systems from a non-secure corporate perimeter. The usual reason is misconfiguration.

Positive Technologies found in a report that 73% of studied corporate networks allowed penetration by some means. Weak passwords, along with vulnerable software and operating systems, as well as flaws in network segmentation -- no DMZ -- and traffic filtering were the most commonly found issues.

Related posts:

• Industrial Manufacturing Sector Increasingly Susceptible to Cyber Attacks
• Kaspersky: Spear-Phishing Attacks Target 400 Industrial Companies
• Continued Russian Attacks Show Weakness of Industrial Control Systems
• ICS Network Managers: Time for a Wake-Up Call

— Larry Loeb has written for many of the last century's major "dead tree" computer magazines, having been, among other things, a consulting editor for BYTE magazine and senior editor for the launch of WebWeek.