CodeSys Critical Vulnerabilities Patched

Codesys released patches for nearly a dozen vulnerabilities discovered in the company’s products.

The industrial automation software solutions are used by largest ICS manufacturers, and vulnerabilities affecting Codesys products can impact a large number of devices.

Researchers have identified many vulnerabilities in Codesys V2 products in the past year, but some of them were combined into a single CVE identifier, resulting in a total of 13 flaws being assigned CVEs.

These vulnerabilities are simple to exploit, and they can be successfully exploited to cause consequences such as sensitive information leakage, PLCs entering a severe fault state, and arbitrary code execution. In combination with industrial scenarios on field, these vulnerabilities could expose industrial production to stagnation, equipment damage.

In particular, Two of the security holes related to improperly protected passwords and the lack of password protection, have been assigned critical severity ratings, and several have been rated high severity. More than half of the flaws can be exploited for DoS attacks.

Codesys admits that the vulnerabilities can be exploited remotely by an attacker with low skills, but in many cases an attacker requires some form of access to the targeted system. Codesys is not aware of any public exploits targeting the flaws.

Several other vendors that use Codesys are likely affected as well. The list includes Wago, Eaton, Bosch Rexroth, Bachmann, Festo, Keba, Kinco and Exor.

PoC how an attacker could launch a DoS attack against an ABB PLC: