Visual Components (owned by KUKA) is a robotic simulator that allows simulating factories and robots in order toimprove planning and decision-making processes. Visual Components software requires a special license which can beobtained from a network license server. The network license server binds to all interfaces (0.0.0.0) and listensfor packets over UDP port 5093. No authentication/authorization is required in order to communicate with theserver. The protocol being used is a property protocol by RMS Sentinel which provides the licensing infrastructurefor the network license server. RMS Sentinel license manager service exposes UDP port 5093 which provides sensitivesystem information that could be leveraged for further exploitation without any kind of authentication. Thisinformation includes detailed hardware and OS characteristics.After a decryption process, a textual protocol is found which contains a simple header with the requested command,application-identifier, and some arguments. The protocol leaks information regarding the receiving serverinformation, license information and managing licenses, among others.Through this flaw, attackers can retreive information about a KUKA simulation system, particularly, the version ofthe licensing server, which is connected to the simulator, and which will allow them to launch local simulationswith similar characteristics, further understanding the dynamics of motion virtualization and opening doors toother attacks (see RVDP#711 and RVDP#712 for subsequent vulnerabilities that compromise integrity andavailability).Beyond compromising simulations, Visual Components provides capabilities to interface with industrial machinery.Particularly, their PLC Connectivity feature makes it easy to connect simulations with control systems usingeither the industry standard OPC UA or other supported vendor specific interfaces. This fills the gap of jumpingfrom simulation to real and enables attackers to pivot from the Visual Components simulator to robots or otherIndustrial Control System (ICS) devices, such as PLCs.
The product exposes sensitive information to an actor that is not explicitly authorized to have access to that information.
| Name | Vendor | Start Version | End Version |
|---|---|---|---|
| Visual_components_network_license_server | Kuka | 2.0.8 (including) | 2.0.8 (including) |
There are many different kinds of mistakes that introduce information exposures. The severity of the error can range widely, depending on the context in which the product operates, the type of sensitive information that is revealed, and the benefits it may provide to an attacker. Some kinds of sensitive information include:
Information might be sensitive to different parties, each of which may have their own expectations for whether the information should be protected. These parties include:
Information exposures can occur in different ways:
It is common practice to describe any loss of confidentiality as an “information exposure,” but this can lead to overuse of CWE-200 in CWE mapping. From the CWE perspective, loss of confidentiality is a technical impact that can arise from dozens of different weaknesses, such as insecure file permissions or out-of-bounds read. CWE-200 and its lower-level descendants are intended to cover the mistakes that occur in behaviors that explicitly manage, store, transfer, or cleanse sensitive information.