CVE-2019-6577

A vulnerability has been identified in SIMATIC HMI Comfort Panels 4 - 22 (All versions < V15.1 Update 1), SIMATIC HMI Comfort Outdoor Panels 7 & 15 (All versions < V15.1 Update 1), SIMATIC HMI KTP Mobile Panels KTP400F, KTP700, KTP700F, KTP900 und KTP900F (All versions < V15.1 Update 1), SIMATIC WinCC Runtime Advanced (All versions < V15.1 Update 1), SIMATIC WinCC Runtime Professional (All versions < V15.1 Update 1), SIMATIC WinCC (TIA Portal) (All versions < V15.1 Update 1), SIMATIC HMI Classic Devices (TP/MP/OP/MP Mobile Panel) (All versions). The integrated web server could allow Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) attacks if an attacker is able to modify particular parts of the device configuration via SNMP. The security vulnerability could be exploited by an attacker with network access to the affected system. Successful exploitation requires system privileges and user interaction. An attacker could use the vulnerability to compromise confidentiality and the integrity of the affected system. At the stage of publishing this security advisory no public exploitation is known.

Weakness

The product receives input from an upstream component, but it does not neutralize or incorrectly neutralizes special characters such as “<”, “>”, and “&” that could be interpreted as web-scripting elements when they are sent to a downstream component that processes web pages.

Affected Software

Potential Mitigations

• Use and specify an output encoding that can be handled by the downstream component that is reading the output. Common encodings include ISO-8859-1, UTF-7, and UTF-8. When an encoding is not specified, a downstream component may choose a different encoding, either by assuming a default encoding or automatically inferring which encoding is being used, which can be erroneous. When the encodings are inconsistent, the downstream component might treat some character or byte sequences as special, even if they are not special in the original encoding. Attackers might then be able to exploit this discrepancy and conduct injection attacks; they even might be able to bypass protection mechanisms that assume the original encoding is also being used by the downstream component.
• The problem of inconsistent output encodings often arises in web pages. If an encoding is not specified in an HTTP header, web browsers often guess about which encoding is being used. This can open up the browser to subtle XSS attacks.

Related Attack Patterns

• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/18.html
• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/193.html
• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/32.html
• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/86.html

References

• http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/108412
• https://cert-portal.siemens.com/productcert/pdf/ssa-804486.pdf
• https://www.us-cert.gov/ics/advisories/ICSA-19-134-09
• http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/108412
• https://cert-portal.siemens.com/productcert/pdf/ssa-804486.pdf
• https://www.us-cert.gov/ics/advisories/ICSA-19-134-09