11 May 2021

KLCERT-20-021: Moxa NPort IA5000A Series. Cleartext Transmission of Sensitive Information via Moxa Service

Vendor

Moxa

Researcher

Alexander Nochvay, Kaspersky ICS CERT

Timeline

Timeline

  • Kaspersky ICS CERT advisory published

    11 May 2021

  • Moxa published the advisory

    28 April 2021

  • Moxa confirmed the vulnerability

    24 August 2020

  • Vulnerability reported

    14 August 2020

Description

Cleartext Transmission of Sensitive Information via Moxa Service in NPort IA5000A series serial devices.

Exploitability

Remotely exploitable: network access to 4800/UDP or 4900/TCP is required

Attack complexity

High skill level to exploit: an attacker must perform Man-in-the-Middle attack

Privilege required

No privileges required

User interaction

User interaction required: it is necessary to use clients of the Moxa Service like DSU and NPort search utility by user

Impact

Successfully exploiting the vulnerability could enable attackers to read authentication data, device configuration, and other sensitive data transmitted over Moxa Service.

Existence of exploit

Unknown

Affected products

NPort IA5150A-IEX
NPort IA5150A-T-IEX
NPort IA5150A-T
NPort IA5150A
NPort IA5150AI-IEX
NPort IA5150AI-T-IE
NPort IA5150AI-T
NPort IA5150AI
NPort IA5250A-IEX
NPort IA5250A-T-IEX
NPort IA5250A-T
NPort IA5250A
NPort IA5250AI-IEX
NPort IA5250AI-T-IE
NPort IA5250AI-T
NPort IA5250AI
NPort IA5450A-T
NPort IA5450A
NPort IA5450AI-T
NPort IA5450AI

Mitigation

Vendor mitigation

Moxa products can disable Moxa Service to mitigate this risk. Please refer to the Console Settings section in the user manual for more details.

Link to Moxa’s advisory: https://www.moxa.com/en/support/product-support/security-advisory/nport-ia5000a-serial-device-servers-vulnerabilities

KL mitigation

Set up a border firewall (or a similar network traffic control solution) passing traffic into the device’s network segment to allow traffic to ports 4800/UDP and 4900/TCP from authorized parties only.

Disable Moxa Service

Firewall. Configure the firewall to restrict access to the industrial network in such a way that only essential communications from authorized sources are allowed. This will help reduce the attack surface. Make sure that the firewall restrictions do not affect core business workflows.

VPN. Use virtual private networks (VPN) to secure remote access to the industrial network. A VPN encrypts network traffic between VPN clients and the VPN server, as well as providing secure authorized access to local resources on the company’s internal network. Traffic encryption protects against traffic eavesdropping attacks, including man-in-the-middle (MitM) and other types of traffic analysis attacks.

Network monitoring. Implement a network intrusion detection solution (NIDS). A comprehensive IDS solution is capable of detecting unusual network connections and abnormal traffic sent to the device, providing timely information about various suspicious activities and sufficiently reducing the attacker’s chances of successful exploitation.

Network segmentation. Compartmentalize your network: implement network segmentation and strict access control for each segment to provide more comprehensive and effective protection against a wide range of threats. Proper network segmentation prevents attackers from reaching critical assets in the event of a network breach.

Kaspersky publishes information on newly identified vulnerabilities in order to raise user awareness of the IT security threats detected. Kaspersky does not make any guarantees in respect of information received from vendors of products in which vulnerabilities have been identified, which is included in the following sections of the advisory: Affected Products, Vendor Mitigation.

Timeline

  • Kaspersky ICS CERT advisory published

    11 May 2021

  • Moxa published the advisory

    28 April 2021

  • Moxa confirmed the vulnerability

    24 August 2020

  • Vulnerability reported

    14 August 2020