CVE Vulnerabilities

CVE-2020-7592

Cleartext Transmission of Sensitive Information

Published: Jul 14, 2020 | Modified: Jul 22, 2020
CVSS 3.x
6.5
MEDIUM
Source:
NVD
CVSS:3.1/AV:A/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
CVSS 2.x
3.3 LOW
AV:A/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:N/A:N
RedHat/V2
RedHat/V3
Ubuntu

A vulnerability has been identified in SIMATIC HMI Basic Panels 1st Generation (incl. SIPLUS variants) (All versions), SIMATIC HMI Basic Panels 2nd Generation (incl. SIPLUS variants) (All versions), SIMATIC HMI Comfort Panels (incl. SIPLUS variants) (All versions), SIMATIC HMI KTP700F Mobile Arctic (All versions), SIMATIC HMI Mobile Panels 2nd Generation (All versions), SIMATIC WinCC Runtime Advanced (All versions). Unencrypted communication between the configuration software and the respective device could allow an attacker to capture potential plain text communication and have access to sensitive information.

Weakness

The product transmits sensitive or security-critical data in cleartext in a communication channel that can be sniffed by unauthorized actors.

Affected Software

Name Vendor Start Version End Version
Simatic_hmi_basic_panels_1st_generation Siemens * *
Simatic_hmi_basic_panels_2nd_generation Siemens * *
Simatic_wincc_runtime_advanced Siemens * *

Extended Description

Many communication channels can be “sniffed” (monitored) by adversaries during data transmission. For example, in networking, packets can traverse many intermediary nodes from the source to the destination, whether across the internet, an internal network, the cloud, etc. Some actors might have privileged access to a network interface or any link along the channel, such as a router, but they might not be authorized to collect the underlying data. As a result, network traffic could be sniffed by adversaries, spilling security-critical data. Applicable communication channels are not limited to software products. Applicable channels include hardware-specific technologies such as internal hardware networks and external debug channels, supporting remote JTAG debugging. When mitigations are not applied to combat adversaries within the product’s threat model, this weakness significantly lowers the difficulty of exploitation by such adversaries. When full communications are recorded or logged, such as with a packet dump, an adversary could attempt to obtain the dump long after the transmission has occurred and try to “sniff” the cleartext from the recorded communications in the dump itself.

Potential Mitigations

References