The Emerson DeltaV Distributed Control System (DCS) controllers and IO cards through 2022-04-29 misuse passwords. Access to privileged operations on the maintenance port TELNET interface (23/TCP) on M-series and SIS (CSLS/LSNB/LSNG) nodes is controlled by means of utility passwords. These passwords are generated using a deterministic, insecure algorithm using a single seed value composed of a day/hour/minute timestamp with less than 16 bits of entropy. The seed value is fed through a lookup table and a series of permutation operations resulting in three different four-character passwords corresponding to different privilege levels. An attacker can easily reconstruct these passwords and thus gain access to privileged maintenance operations. NOTE: this is different from CVE-2014-2350.

References

• https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2022-29965
• https://www.cisa.gov/uscert/ics/advisories/icsa-22-181-03
• https://www.forescout.com/blog/