Vulnerability Note VU#180876

GE Fanuc Proficy Information Portal transmits authentication credentials in plain text

Overview

GE Fanuc Proficy Information Portal can transmit authentication credentials in plain text. An attacker could monitor traffic, obtain valid credentials, and gain access to the portal.

I. Description

GE Fanuc Proficy Information Portal is a web-based systems reporting tool often used to consolidate and integrate online and process-based systems data between Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems and the corporate network. Authentication credentials for the portal may be sent in an insecure manner. During the login proceedure usernames are sent to the portal in plaintext and passwords are sent in Base64 encoded format. An attacker may be able to monitor network traffic and obtain credentaials to gain unauthorized access to the portal.

This vulnerability affects GE Fanuc Proficy Information Portal up to and including version 2.6.

II. Impact

An attacker who can intercept network traffic can obtain authentication credentials.

III. Solution

Use SSL

Proficy Portal version 2.5 and up supports the use of Secure Socket Layer (SSL) connections between the client and server. The SSL protocol is commonly used to provide authentication, encryption, integrity, and non-repudiation services via public/private keys and certificates. Proficy customers should refer to GE Fanuc knowledge base article KB12459 for more information and configuration instructions.

Enable Integrated Windows Authentication

It is possible to configure the portal to use domain authentication so that user credentials are not longer sent in plaintext. According to GE Fanuc:

If domain security is being utilized, the easiest and perhaps most secure method of transmitting username and password information is to enable Windows Authentication within IIS. In this mode, IE and IIS will negotiate the security mechanism's to use and automatically authenticate the user logged into the machine running IE from the IIS server. No password is ever passed between the two computers and therefore cannot be intercepted.

Proficy customers should refer to GE Fanuc knowledge base article KB12459 and the Microsoft documents in the References section below for more information.

Restrict Access

Restrict network access to hosts that require connections to the portal. Do not allow access to the portal from untrusted networks such as the internet.

Systems Affected

Vendor	Status	Date Updated
GE Fanuc	Vulnerable	24-Jan-2008

References

http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/487075/30/0/threaded
http://support.gefanuc.com/support/index?page=kbchannel&id=KB12459
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/324274
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/WindowsServer2003/Library/IIS/36ea667e-c578-43b5-87fa-a2f174efb27a.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windowsserver2003/library/iis/523ae943-5e6a-4200-9103-9808baa00157.mspx
http://www.gefanuc.com/as_en/gefanuc/resource_center/hmi_scada/hmiscada_security.html
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/guide/rmi/socketfactory/SSLInfo.html
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/guide/rmi/socketfactory/index.html

Credit

This vulnerability was reported by Eyal Udassin of C4 Security.

This document was written by Chris Taschner.

Other Information

Date Public	01/24/2008
Date First Published	01/25/2008 03:26:36 PM
Date Last Updated	02/01/2008
CERT Advisory
CVE Name	CVE-2008-0174
US-CERT Technical Alerts
Metric	0.17
Document Revision	46