Safety flaws in Telit Cinterion mobile modems, broadly utilized in sectors together with industrial, healthcare, and telecommunications, may enable distant attackers to execute arbitrary code through SMS.
A set of eight separate points, seven of them with identifiers CVE-2023-47610 by CVE-2023-47616 and one other that has but to be registered, have been disclosed final November by security researchers at Kaspersky’s ICS CERT division.
Earlier than publishing the security points, the security firm had reported them to the seller in February 2023.
On Saturday, on the OffensiveCon convention in Berlin, Alexander Kozlov and Sergey Anufrienko shall be offering low stage technical particulars in regards to the security points and the way a risk actor may exploit them to take management of susceptible Telit Cinterion gadgets.
SMS to gadget takeover
Essentially the most extreme of the vulnerabilities is CVE-2023-47610, a heap overflow downside that impacts the modem’s Person Airplane Location (SUPL) message handlers.
Kaspersky, in collaboration with Telit and based mostly on a radical evaluation of the technical particulars, assigned it a severity rating of 8.8 out of the utmost 10. Nonetheless, NIST’s evaluation is that the problem has essential influence and obtained a severity rating of 9.8.
Attackers exploiting the flaw through specifically crafted SMS messages may set off the vulnerability and execute arbitrary code remotely on the modem with out requiring authentication.
In a report shared with BleepingComputer, the researchers say that the SMS messaging interface is current on all modems and that accessing it’s attainable if the subscriber variety of the goal modem within the mobile operator’s community is understood.
They clarify that operator restrictions could generally forestall sending binary SMS however a pretend base station ought to bypass this limitation.
By exploiting CVE-2023-47610 to execute arbitrary code through SMS, an attacker can get deep-level entry to the modem’s working system.
“This entry additionally facilitates the manipulation of RAM and flash reminiscence, rising the potential to grab full management over the modem’s functionalities—all with out authentication or requiring bodily entry to the gadget” – Kaspersky
Though the remainder of the vulnerabilities that Kaspersky researchers found obtained a decrease severity rating, they can be utilized to compromise the integrity of MIDlets – Java-based purposes with varied capabilities.
In accordance with Kaspersky, an attacker may obtain code execution with elevated privileges (producer stage) by circumventing digital signature checks (CVE-2023-47611). This might pose a risk not simply to information confidentiality and integrity but in addition to broader community security and gadget integrity.
Though the analysis focused the Cinterion EHS5-E sequence modem, as a result of different merchandise from the seller have related software program and {hardware} structure extra variants are additionally impacted:
- Cinterion BGS5
- Cinterion EHS5/6/7
- Cinterion PDS5/6/8
- Cinterion ELS61/81
- Cinterion PLS62
Telit fastened a number of the disclosed vulnerabilities however some stay unpatched, Kaspersky advised BleepingComputer.
“The vulnerabilities we discovered, coupled with the widespread deployment of those gadgets in varied sectors, spotlight the potential for in depth world disruption,” says Evgeny Goncharov, head of Kaspersky ICS CERT.
Goncharov notes that as a result of the modems are embedded in different options, it’s a problem to find out which merchandise are impacted.
The security firm has some suggestions to mitigate the threats, which is many of the instances attainable by working with the telecom operator. One technique is to disable SMS sending to impacted gadgets and utilizing a securely configured personal APN.
Kaspersky additionally recommends imposing software signature verification to stop the set up of untrusted MIDIets on the modem and take measures to stop unauthorized bodily entry to the gadgets.
