Worlds Electrical Grids Open to Attack

A serious vulnerability has been found in yet another computerized control system that runs some of the world's most critical infrastructure, this time in a product sold by a vendor known as the ABB Group.

According to researchers from C4 - a firm specializing in the security of so-called SCADA, or Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition, systems - ABB's Process Communication Unit (PCU) 400 suffers from a critical buffer overflow bug.

"The vulnerability was exploited by C4 to verify it can be used for arbitrary code execution by an unauthorized attacker," researcher Idan Ofrat wrote in this advisory published on Thursday. "In addition, an attacker can use his control over the FEP server to insert a generic electric grid malware...in order to cause harm to the grid."

The vulnerable software controls critical national infrastructure, including electrical grids. The vulnerability affects versions 4.4, 4.5, and 4.6, and possibly others, the C4 advisory warns.