Over 4,400 Rockwell PLCs Exposed Online, 22 Found in Water Attack Cities

Summary: Forescout's August 3 scan found 4,407 exposed Rockwell Automation PLCs worldwide, including 2,844 in the United States, and 22 internet-facing controllers in cities hit by recent attacks on US water utilities, 19 of them on the same mobile carrier network. Forescout said the described effects could be achieved without a vulnerability exploit by changing IP addresses and setting passwords on already-reachable controllers, and it could not confirm any were compromised.
What you should know: Nineteen of the 22 controllers in affected cities ran firmware susceptible to CVE-2017-16740, and the FBI reported at least one victim found modified PLC project files - while neither the government alerts nor Forescout's analysis explains how attackers found or initially accessed their targets.

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Mentions: CVE-2017-16740