Cyber Risks · Dragos Blog

Assessing the BACnet Control System Vulnerability

Summary: McAfee researcher Douglas McKee disclosed a buffer overflow in Delta Controls' eBMGR, a combined BACnet gateway and controllable building controller running embedded Linux, where a BVLC header length field larger than the 1476-byte standard is not sanitized before a memcpy() call. McAfee achieved full remote code execution with the bug, though Dragos assessed the risk of exploiting a BACnet controller as low, noting freely available tools can already connect to Internet-connected building systems and modify their operation without an exploit.

Bottom line: The same protocol lets an attacker join as a Foreign Device and issue HVAC commands without any exploit at all, and a persistent attacker who keeps crashing the controller could hold an output asserted indefinitely - a scenario Dragos flags as riskiest for data centers, where a failing air handling system could cause computers to melt.

Read the original at Dragos Blog ↗

Topics
OT / ICS & Critical Infrastructure
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