[Infowarrior] - SCADA industry debates flaw disclosure

[Richard Forno]

 SCADA industry debates flaw disclosure
Robert Lemos, SecurityFocus 2006-06-16
http://www.securityfocus.com/news/11396?ref=rss

The outing of a simple crash bug has caused public soul-searching in an
industry that has historically been closed-mouthed about its
vulnerabilities.

The flaw, in a particular vendor's implementation of the Inter-Control
Center Communications Protocol (ICCP), could have allowed an attacker the
ability to crash a server. Yet, unlike corporate servers that handle
groupware applications or Web sites, the vulnerable server software--from
process-control application maker LiveData--monitors and controls real-time
devices in electric power utilities and healthcare settings. The best known
types of devices are supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA)
devices and distributed control system (DCS) devices.

A crash becomes a more serious event in those applications, said Dale
Peterson, CEO of Digital Bond, the infrastructure security firm that found
the flaw.

"These are what you would consider, in the IT world, critical enterprise
applications," Peterson said. "But the companies don't act like these are
critical enterprise applications."

LiveData maintains that the flaw is a software bug, not a security
vulnerability, pointing out that it only affects how the LiveData ICCP
Server handles a non-secure implementation of the communications
protocol--typically used only in environments not connected to a public
network.

"In general SCADA networks are run as very private networks," said Jeff
Robbins, CEO of LiveData. "You cannot harness an army of public zombie
servers and attack them, because they are not accessible."

The incident has touched off a heated debate among a small collection of
vulnerability researchers, critical infrastructure security experts and the
typically staid real-time process control systems industry. The controversy
mirrors the long-standing dispute between independent researchers and
software vendors over disclosing vulnerabilities in enterprise and consumer
applications. In that industry, researchers have taken Apple, Oracle, Cisco
and Microsoft to task at various times over the last year for the perception
that the companies were not responding adequately to reports of flaws in
their software products.

Last week at the Process Control System Forum (PCSF), a conference on
infrastructure management systems funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland
Security, a similar debate played itself out. Perhaps three dozen industry
representatives and security researchers met during a breakout session to
hash out the issues involving disclosure. The tone became, at times,
contentious, said Matt Franz, the moderator at conference panel on the topic
and a SCADA security researcher with Digital Bond.

"The vendors were sticking together saying that (researchers) didn't need to
be involved with SCADA flaws," he said. "'It puts people and infrastructure
in danger,' they said."

Moreover, many vendors did not appreciate the involvement of the U.S.
Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT), the nation's response group
tasked with managing the process of vulnerability remediation for critical
infrastructure, Franz said.

The LiveData flaw was the first flaw in SCADA systems handled by US-CERT and
the CERT Coordination Center, the group that manages the national agency.
While valuable as a learning experience, the entrance of a third party into
the disclosure of a flaw in an infrastructure system brought up more
questions than answers. At the PCSF session, many vendors voiced concerns
over involving a third party.

"I did not come away with a feeling that any issues were settled," said Art
Manion, Internet security analyst for the CERT Coordination Center and a
participant in the discussion at the conference.

The debate over how disclosure should be handled underscores both the
intense focus on SCADA and DCS systems as potential targets of cyberattacks
and the position of many companies in the real-time process control systems
industry that vulnerabilities in such systems require special treatment.

"In security circles, it is widely discredited that you can secure something
though obscurity--yet SCADA systems are really obscure," LiveData's Robbins
said. "That is not a statement of a principle of security and doesn't
rationalize anything, but is a fact."

Even SCADA security specialists agree that obscurity can raise the hurdle
enough to keep most online attackers from jumping into SCADA systems.

"There are some legacy systems out there running plants that are more secure
than many latest and greatest systems, because they are not connected to the
Internet or they are using obscure standards," said Ernest Rakaczky, program
director for process control systems at infrastructure firm Invensys.

That's true--at least to an extent, said CERT Coordination Center's Manion.

"The information on these systems can be found by a determined attacker,"
Manion said. "Part of our outreach is to show that people can find out about
these things and find vulnerabilities."

Consultants who have done penetration testing and security audits of
real-time process control systems tell grim stories about the lack of
security in the systems. Data is transfered with no encryption using
protocols, such as Telnet and FTP, that are being phased out in other
industries; many firewalls have ports opened to any traffic; and, many
workstations still run Windows NT, said Jonathan Pollet, vice president and
founder of PlantData Technologies, a division of infrastructure security
company Verano.

"The guys who are setting up these systems are not security professionals,"
he said. "And many of the systems that are running SCADA applications were
not designed to be secure--it's a hacker's playground."

For between 5 and 10 percent of the networks audited by PlantData, a single
ping attack or a data flood aimed at a SCADA system could shut down most of
the managed devices, Pollet said.

Yet, security researchers acknowledge that the software that monitors,
manages and runs the variety of manufacturing and infrastructure control
systems is indeed different. While researchers can hold the threat of public
disclosure over the heads of an uncooperative software maker in the
enterprise application arena, publicly outing a flaw in a SCADA or DCS
system has larger ramifications, Pollet said.

"You have to be careful disclosing these issues to the public when the
vendors seem uninterested in talking about the problem, because these
systems cannot be patched overnight and the information could prove
devastating in the wrong hands," he said.

Moreover, software vendors and infrastructure operators legitimately need
more time because most of the industry's legacy systems were not created to
be easily updated. And, to be fair, LiveData's response to the first SCADA
vulnerability handled by a third party--about 3 to 6 months for a fix and
less than 9 months for notification--is in line with the response from many
enterprise and commercial software makers. Not bad for an industry that has
not had a history of third-party vulnerability disclosure, said Digital
Bond's Franz.

"The idea that someone outside their customer base would have access to
their product to find vulnerabilities is strange to them," said Franz, who
created an interest group within the Process Control Systems Forum to hash
out the issues.

Security researchers are not the only ones applying pressure to software
developers in the SCADA and DCS industry. The software maker's
customers--infrastructure owners and operators--are starting to demand proof
of security audits, especially in the power industry where companies are
required by a recent law to adhere to the Critical Infrastructure Protection
(CIP) guidelines published by the North American Electric Reliability
Council (NERC).

"The difference that a few months has made is absolutely incredible," said
Lori Dustin, vice president of marketing and services for infrastructure
security company Verano. "The people I'm meeting with now have a copy of the
NERC documents in their hands."

While many in the real-time process control industry might not agree,
Invensys's Rakaczky stresses that allowing US-CERT to bring other
industries' vulnerability reporting practices to the bear on infrastructure
issues should help reduce communications problems and increase trust.

"People will respond faster than if some random white hat calls them up out
of the blue," he said.

But, while vendors work with US-CERT and focus on improving product
security, infrastructure owners need to move more quickly to prevent
unauthorized access to their systems from the Internet and implement more
strict auditing, Rakaczky said.

"Right now, we need perimeter protection," he said. "We need to stop the
wound from bleeding before we can heal it."