CVE-2014-5431

Baxter SIGMA Spectrum Infusion System version 6.05 (model 35700BAX) with wireless battery module (WBM) version 16 contains a hard-coded password, which provides access to basic biomedical information, limited device settings, and network configuration of the WBM, if connected. The hard-coded password may allow an attacker with physical access to the device to access management functions to make unauthorized configuration changes to biomedical settings such as turn on and off wireless connections and the phase-complete audible alarm that indicates the end of an infusion phase. Baxter has released a new version of the SIGMA Spectrum Infusion System, version 8, which incorporates hardware and software changes.

Weakness

The product contains a hard-coded password, which it uses for its own inbound authentication or for outbound communication to external components.

Affected Software

Extended Description

There are two main variations of a hard-coded password:

Potential Mitigations

• For inbound authentication: apply strong one-way hashes to your passwords and store those hashes in a configuration file or database with appropriate access control. That way, theft of the file/database still requires the attacker to try to crack the password. When receiving an incoming password during authentication, take the hash of the password and compare it to the hash that you have saved.
• Use randomly assigned salts for each separate hash that you generate. This increases the amount of computation that an attacker needs to conduct a brute-force attack, possibly limiting the effectiveness of the rainbow table method.
• For front-end to back-end connections: Three solutions are possible, although none are complete.

References

• https://ics-cert.us-cert.gov/advisories/ICSA-15-181-01
• https://ics-cert.us-cert.gov/advisories/ICSA-15-181-01