Easing the Conscience with OPC UA

ACM Internet Measurement Conference (IMC), pp. 101–110

Abstract

Due to increasing digitalization, formerly isolated industrial networks, e.g., for factory and process automation, move closer and closer to the Internet, mandating secure communication. However, securely setting up OPC UA, the prime candidate for secure industrial communication, is challenging due to a large variety of insecure options. To study whether Internet-facing OPC UA appliances are configured securely, we actively scan the IPv4 address space for publicly reachable OPC UA systems and assess the security of their configurations. We observe problematic security configurations such as missing access control (on 24% of hosts), disabled security functionality (24%), or use of deprecated cryptographic primitives (25%) on in total 92% of the reachable deployments. Furthermore, we discover several hundred devices in multiple autonomous systems sharing the same security certificate, opening the door for impersonation attacks. Overall, in this paper, we highlight commonly found security misconfigurations and underline the importance of appropriate configuration for security-featuring protocols.

Authors 6

1. Markus Dahlmanns Aachen Communication and Distributed Systems

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   Communication and Distributed Systems, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany

2. Johannes Lohmöller Aachen Communication and Distributed Systems

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   Communication and Distributed Systems, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany

3. Ina Berenice Fink Aachen Communication and Distributed Systems

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   Communication and Distributed Systems, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany

4. Jan Pennekamp Aachen Communication and Distributed Systems

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   Communication and Distributed Systems, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany

5. Klaus Wehrle Aachen Communication and Distributed Systems

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   Communication and Distributed Systems, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany

6. Martin Henze

   Fraunhofer Institute for Communication, Information Processing and Ergonomics

   Affiliation as printed

   Cyber Analysis & Defense, Fraunhofer FKIE, Wachtberg, Germany