The ABB HMI components implement hidden administrative accounts that are used during the provisioning phase of the HMI interface. These credentials allow the provisioning tool Panel Builder 600 to flash a new interface and Tags (MODBUS coils) mapping to the HMI. These credentials are the idal123 password for the IdalMaster account, and the exor password for the exor account. These credentials are used over both HTTP(S) and FTP. There is no option to disable or change these undocumented credentials. An attacker can use these credentials to login to ABB HMI to read/write HMI configuration files and also to reset the device. This affects ABB CP635 HMI, CP600 HMIClient, Panel Builder 600, IDAL FTP server, IDAL HTTP server, and multiple other HMI components.
Weakness
The product contains hard-coded credentials, such as a password or cryptographic key.
Affected Software
| Name |
Vendor |
Start Version |
End Version |
| Cp620_firmware |
Abb |
* |
1.76 (including) |
Extended Description
There are two main variations:
Potential Mitigations
- For outbound authentication: store passwords, keys, and other credentials outside of the code in a strongly-protected, encrypted configuration file or database that is protected from access by all outsiders, including other local users on the same system. Properly protect the key (CWE-320). If you cannot use encryption to protect the file, then make sure that the permissions are as restrictive as possible [REF-7].
- In Windows environments, the Encrypted File System (EFS) may provide some protection.
- For inbound authentication using passwords: apply strong one-way hashes to 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 handling an incoming password during authentication, take the hash of the password and compare it to the saved hash.
- Use randomly assigned salts for each separate hash that is generated. 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