Siemen’s has sent out an alert on a Denial of Service vulnerability that could affect its SIMATIC S7-400, a family of programmable logic controllers (PLCs) designed for process control in industrial environments. Andrew Lloyd, President at Corero Network Security commented below.
Andrew Lloyd, President at Corero Network Security:
“As we’ve been discussing in relation to Critical Infrastructure security, there is a genuine risk of service disruption, malware infestation and/or safety if control equipment such as these PLCs is exposed on the Internet where the full pandemic of cyber-threats (including DDoS) is there to exploit their vulnerabilities. It comes as little surprise that these PLCs have such vulnerabilities and Siemens should be applauded for disclosing this one. As the notorious Stuxnet worm proved, older PLC equipment was not designed with Internet exposure in mind. Consequently, many have little or no security to protect them from being compromised.Best practice advice would have the control networks that these PLCs form part of completely isolated from the Internet. However, either through ignorance, convenience or efficiency, the required “air gap” is often breached; opening the flood gates to the cyber-threats.”
