Rockwell Automation Connected Components Workbench v12.00.00 and prior does not limit the objects that can be deserialized. This vulnerability allows attackers to craft a malicious serialized object that, if opened by a local user in Connected Components Workbench, may result in remote code execution. This vulnerability requires user interaction to be successfully exploited.
The product deserializes untrusted data without sufficiently verifying that the resulting data will be valid.
| Name | Vendor | Start Version | End Version |
|---|---|---|---|
| Connected_components_workbench | Rockwellautomation | * | 12.00.00 (including) |
It is often convenient to serialize objects for communication or to save them for later use. However, deserialized data or code can often be modified without using the provided accessor functions if it does not use cryptography to protect itself. Furthermore, any cryptography would still be client-side security – which is a dangerous security assumption. Data that is untrusted can not be trusted to be well-formed. When developers place no restrictions on “gadget chains,” or series of instances and method invocations that can self-execute during the deserialization process (i.e., before the object is returned to the caller), it is sometimes possible for attackers to leverage them to perform unauthorized actions, like generating a shell.