Security holes in SCADA product now patched

Over 7600 of those systems for plant operation and monitoring have been sold worldwide, including power plants, chemical and petrochemical plants in Europe, the USA and Asia.

The vulnerabilities, if exploited, could allow could allow an attacker to perform a denial of service (DoS) or even potentially get system privileges to execute arbitrary code with user and system privileges. Hackers could also take screenshots to gather information about running projects or hijack SCADA communications.

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Rapid7 warns that the vulnerabilities could affect any organisation running CENTUM CS3000 engineering projects. They recommend upgrading the software, and protecting access to engineering projects by making sure they can only be accessed remotely through VPN or gateway products. During its investigation, which was conducted by Rapid7's Juan Vazquez and independent researcher Julian Vilas Diaz, some CENTUM installations were identified that were vulnerable and directly connected the Internet. Yokogawa was alerted to the vulnerabilities in December 2013.

In March 2014, Yokogawa created a patch (CENTUM CS 3000 R3.09.50) to mitigate the reported vulnerabilities. To activate the patch software, the computer needs to be rebooted. Older versions of the CENTUM CS 3000 will need to be updated to the latest version of R3.09.50 before installing the patch software. Yokogawa also suggests all customers introduce appropriate security measures to the overall system, not just for the vulnerabilities identified.