From Box to Backdoor: Discovering Just How Insecure an ICS Device is in Only 2 Weeks

This post was authored by Martin Lee and Warren Mercer, based on research conducted by Patrick DeSantis.

Industrial Control Systems provide stability to civilization. They clean our water, deliver our power, and enable the physical infrastructure that we have learnt to rely on. Industrial Control Systems are also highly prevalent in manufacturing. They’re the robots who build your cars and assemble T.V’s, they’re the forklifts that ship your e-commerce purchases. As factories, utilities, and other industrial companies shift to a modern industrial infrastructure, it’s vital that those processes and devices remain safe from attackers.

One key component in any ICS architecture is the access point which provides the connection between ICS devices and a industrial wireless network. Inspired by From LOW to PWNED we decided to take a look at one ICS wireless access point and see just how many vulnerabilities we could find in two weeks.