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T0819 Exploit Public-Facing Application

Adversaries may leverage weaknesses to exploit internet-facing software for initial access into an industrial network. Internet-facing software may be user applications, underlying networking implementations, an assets operating system, weak defenses, etc. Targets of this technique may be intentionally exposed for the purpose of remote management and visibility.

An adversary may seek to target public-facing applications as they may provide direct access into an ICS environment or the ability to move into the ICS network. Publicly exposed applications may be found through online tools that scan the internet for open ports and services. Version numbers for the exposed application may provide adversaries an ability to target specific known vulnerabilities. Exposed control protocol or remote access ports found in Commonly Used Port may be of interest by adversaries.

Item Value
ID T0819
Sub-techniques
Tactics TA0108
Platforms Human-Machine Interface
Version 1.0
Created 21 May 2020
Last Modified 09 March 2023

Procedure Examples

ID Name Description
G0034 Sandworm Team Sandworm Team actors exploited vulnerabilities in GE’s Cimplicity HMI and Advantech/Broadwin WebAccess HMI software which had been directly exposed to the internet. 5 4

Mitigations

ID Mitigation Description
M0948 Application Isolation and Sandboxing Application isolation will limit the other processes and system features an exploited target can access. Examples of built in features are software restriction policies, AppLocker for Windows, and SELinux or AppArmor for Linux.
M0950 Exploit Protection Web Application Firewalls may be used to limit exposure of applications to prevent exploit traffic from reaching the application. 1
M0930 Network Segmentation Segment externally facing servers and services from the rest of the network with a DMZ or on separate hosting infrastructure.
M0926 Privileged Account Management Use least privilege for service accounts. 2 3
M0951 Update Software Regularly scan externally facing systems for vulnerabilities and establish procedures to rapidly patch systems when critical vulnerabilities are discovered through scanning and public disclosure.
M0916 Vulnerability Scanning Regularly scan externally facing systems for vulnerabilities and establish procedures to rapidly patch systems when critical vulnerabilities are discovered through scanning and public disclosure.

Detection

ID Data Source Data Component
DS0015 Application Log Application Log Content
DS0029 Network Traffic Network Traffic Content

References

  1. Karen Scarfone; Paul Hoffman 2009, September Guidelines on Firewalls and Firewall Policy Retrieved. 2020/09/25  ↩

  2. Keith Stouffer 2015, May Guide to Industrial Control Systems (ICS) Security Retrieved. 2018/03/28  ↩

  3. National Institute of Standards and Technology 2013, April Security and Privacy Controls for Federal Information Systems and Organizations Retrieved. 2020/09/17  ↩

  4. ICS CERT 2018, September 06 Advantech/Broadwin WebAccess RPC Vulnerability (Update B) Retrieved. 2019/12/05  ↩

  5. ICS-CERT 2014, December 10 ICS Alert (ICS-ALERT-14-281-01E) Ongoing Sophisticated Malware Campaign Compromising ICS (Update E) Retrieved. 2019/10/11  ↩