The document discusses the use of cybersecurity assessment tools on Industrial Control Systems (ICS), emphasizing Digital Bond's expertise in performing thorough security assessments since 2000. It outlines various assessment types, the importance of secure configuration, and risk reduction strategies while highlighting issues with ICS protocols that are insecure by design. Additionally, it provides detailed guidance on scanning methodologies, specific tools like Nessus, and effective patch management practices tailored for ICS environments.

1. Using Cyber Security
Assessment Tools on
Industrial Control Systems (ICS)
Dale Peterson, Stephen Hilt
peterson@digitalbond.com, hilt@digitalbond.com
Twitter: @digitalbond

2. Digital Bond Research
• Funded by DHS, DoE, UK and Japanese Gov, …
• Funded by Digital Bond
• Add ICS Intelligence to Security Tools
– Redpoint, Bandolier, Quickdraw, Basecamp
– Digital Bond is vendor neutral
– We do not sell, install or support any products
All Available For Free At Digitalbond.com

3. • S4x15 is January 13-16 in Miami Beach
• Advanced, highly technical sessions from the
best global ICSsec talent
• See agenda and videos from past S4 at
digitalbond.com

4. ICS Security Assessments
• Digital Bond performed our first ICS security
assessment in 2000 … 15 years ago
• Digital Bond performs assessments on live /
operational / running critical infrastructure ICS
– Power plants, pipelines, water treatment, chemical
manufacturing, transportation
• Digital Bond uses scanning tools
• And we have never caused an unacceptable
impact to operations

5. Assessment Types
• Asset Owner / ICS End User Assessments
– Is the ICS deployed and maintained in a good security
practice configuration?
– Are known vulnerabilities remediated / fixed?
– This presentation covers Asset Owner Assessments
• Assessments for Vendors / New Purchases
– Attempts to find new, 0day vulnerabilities
– Very advanced testing, uses some commercial and
free tools, but also a lot of custom code/tools
– Digital Bond Labs does these

6. Asset Owner Assessments
• Architecture Review
• Configuration Inspection
• Physical Inspection
• Policy and Procedure Review and Audit
• Interview (very important for determining risk)
and
• Online Scanning/Testing/Exploits

7. Current State of ICS Security
• Many organizations are just beginning to worry
about ICS security
– They may have a poorly configured firewall
– They may have some anti-virus running
– Little else in the way of ICS cyber security
– Some in oil/gas have been working ICSsec for 5+ years
• ICS protocols and PLC’s are insecure by design
– They lack basic security such as authentication
– Access = compromise
– Impact is limited to engineering and automation skill

8. Efficient Risk Reduction
What should I do next?
Where should you spend your next $ or
hour of time on ICS cyber security to
get the maximum risk reduction or
improvement in security posture?
• Assessment should provide a list of actions
prioritized by efficient risk reduction
• Companies have limited ability to add security

9. Prioritization
• Threat
– Very difficult to determine
– Typically look at the accessibility of the device/system
• Vulnerability
– Assessment can clearly identify this
• Impact
– This is the most important factor
– Don’t waste time on small impact risks, eg serial
connected panels
– Talk to the Operations team, what would happen if …

10. Even the most basic, simple,
non-intrusive scan of
a PLC or ICS application can cause
a denial of service condition.
TR UE!

11. Example 1
• Safety PLC
– Simple port scan of a safety PLC caused it to crash,
and it did not recover when rebooted
– Additional scanning found a port that was used to load
new firmware did not have authentication or even
check parameters
– Any activity on the port started a firmware update
process
– PLC needed to be completely reloaded to recover

12. Example 2
• Redundant Pair of Real Time Servers
– Issues read and write commands to PLC’s
– Provides data and forwards commands from HMI /
Operator Stations
• Scan of Standby Server … no problem
• Scan of Hot/Active Server … crash and failover

13. You cannot and should not use security
scanning tools on an operational ICS
because they can cause important
things to crash.
Fal se!

14. How To Scan ICS
• Staging area or lab
– Some sites have non-operational systems to test
• Leverage redundancy
– An ICS should not have a single point of failure
– Many operator stations / HMI
– Hot and standby servers
• Select best testing time
– Many processes have key times weekly or daily were a
computer or device outage is more difficult to handle

15. Questions For Operations:
1. Is it acceptable if computer x
crashes during the testing window?
2. Can you recover the system in an
acceptable time frame if it crashes?
Answer: Yes … s chedule scan

17. Answer: No … important security finding
• You have a recovery issue
– Don’t touch that because the guy who knew how it
worked is no longer with the company
– What is your Recovery Time Objective (RTO)?
– Do you have a proven ability to meet your RTO?
or
• You have a single point of failure
– Missing redundancy
– We can never reboot or have an outage of a Windows
NT, XP, 2003, 2008, 7 … FRAGILITY

18. Create Your Scan List
• Work with Operations to identify one of each
time of computer or device
• Find a sample that you can scan, assuming it
may go down, without having an unacceptable
impact to Operations
– Always assume it will go down
– Most common case is reboot to recover
• Sometimes warranted even if scanned system doesn’t crash
– Things are much better than 10 years ago

19. Scanning Tool Categories
• Basic Enumeration (what is it?)
• Full featured scan (1000’s of tests)
• Basic, random data fuzz testing
• Secondary application testing
– Web servers, databases
• Exploit proof of concept

20. Broad Based Security Scanner
• Nessus from Tenable Network Security
• Nexpose from Rapid 7
• Retina from Beyond Trust
• DeepDiscovery from Trend Micro
Or
• Scanning as a service, Qualys

21. Nessus Basics
• Nessus is a proprietary comprehensive
vulnerability scanner which is developed by
Tenable Network Security. Nessus is the world's
most popular vulnerability scanner, taking first
place in the 2000, 2003, and 2006 security tools
survey.[2] Tenable Network Security estimates
that it is used by over 75,000 organizations
worldwide.
– http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nessus_(software)

22. Nessus Basics
• Nessus 5.2.7 will be utilized for these labs
– Nessus is available from
http://www.tenable.com/products/nessus
– Instructions to install and configure can be found from
Tenable
– Cost $1500 per year license
– What is included:
• 68,000 + Plugins to check for various Vulnerabilities and
security settings.
• SCADA Specific Plugins
• Ability to run audit policies (available from Tenable’s website)
• Scheduled scans
• Export into HTML, CSV, or Nessus formats.

23. Nessus Basics
• Nessus Polices are how you define what the scan
is suppose to do.
– Policy wizard has many great options to chose from
such as:
• Host Discovery
• Web Application Scanning
• Basic Network Scan
• Patch Audit
• Many others

24. Nessus Basics
• Create a policy from the advanced Policy Wizard
– No defaults are selected, and allows for the most
control

25. Nessus Basics
• Credentialed Scan vs Non Credentialed Scan
– Port scanning – Credentialed scans use netstat to
gather open port information, where as with out
credentialed it will try to send probes to each port.
– Credentialed scans will use local checks for
vulnerabilities which will be more accurate than trying
to use banner information that can be collected about
the service.

26. Nessus Configuration
• Create a name and a description of the policy
that is descriptive of what the policy will be used
for. Example would be
– Name: HMI Scan With Credentials
– Description: Scan with credentials supplied by the site
support personnel

27. Nessus Configuration
• Setting Type > Port Scanning
– This is where one would change the ports if you are
not doing a credentialed scan and want to see ports 1
– 65535 .
– Consider using the UDP scanning option. This will
increase the time of scan, but can collect some UDP
information if credentials are not available.
– If not using credentialed scanning, consider changing
from SYN scan to TCP scan.

28. Nessus Configuration

29. Nessus Configuration
• Setting Type > Performance
– These setting are used for when you need to slow the
scan down, or speed it up based on your
requirements. Normally the defaults will be good to
start, and can be altered if you have issues with
scanning.

30. Nessus Configuration
• Setting Type > Advanced
– Always verify Safe Checks is checked

31. Nessus Configuration
• Credential Types
– Windows Credentials
• Windows XP and Server 2003 an Administrator can be used
• Windows 7 and Server 2008 the Administrator, or a Domain
Admin
– SSH Credentials
• Su to root
• Sudo as user used to log in
• Cisco “Enable”
• Others

32. Nessus Configuration
• Credential Types
– Plain Text Credentials
• telnet
• rsh
• rexec

33. Nessus Configuration

34. Nessus Configuration
• Preferences > Preference Type > Global Variable
Settings
– Thorough Tests will greatly slow down a scan,
however will collect valuable information, such as
what USB Devices have been used, and when they
were lasted used.

35. Nessus Lab 1
• Configure Nessus Policies
– Configure A Policy to use various credentials
– Within Advanced settings for performance and
thorough checks

36. Nessus Scanning
• Once policies have been created scans can be
configured against one or more hosts.
– Basic Settings:
• Name of Scan
• Hosts to be scanned, and what policy to use
– Schedule:
• Now
• On Demand
• Scheduled
– Email Settings:
• Email when scan launches and finishes if SMTP server is
configured.

37. Nessus Scanning

38. Nessus Scan Status

39. Nessus Lab 2
• Running a scan
– Configure Scan with policies created
• Review Scan Output
– Review scan results in Nessus “API XP Test Scan” and
“API XP Test”
• What stands out to you?
• Export Results
– Export the results in multiple formats

40. Nessus Trouble Shooting

41. Nessus Trouble Shooting
• My scans are failing, now what?
– Ensure that the setting in the local security policies
called, "Network access: Sharing and security model
for local accounts", is set to "Classic".
– Ensure that User Account Control is turned off for the
sessoin by setting HKLMSOFTWAREMicrosoft
WindowsCurrentVersionPoliciessystem
LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy to 1. 0 will
disable again.
– Check the firewall settings. If there is a firewall make
sure you are allowing 135/445 as well and File and
Print Sharing is turned on. Usually, best option is to
disable during the duration of the scan.
– Ensure that both the Windows Management
Instrumentation Service and the Remote Registry
Service have been started on the target

42. Nessus Trouble Shooting
• Cont.
– Ensure Anti-Virus, such as SEP, isn’t blocking the scan.
Most Anti-Virus solutions can be disabled during the
duration of the scan.
– Ensure you are using the correct credentials by testing
them.
– Network Issues may cause some scans to fail, ensure
the network is in a state that can support a scan.

43. Nessus Trouble Shooting

44. Security Patching
• ICS scans often identify many missing patches
– Microsoft security patches
– 3rd party / application software security patches
– Security software security patches, eg anti-virus
– Even ICS security patches
Question: What is the security finding?
Answer: Ineffective security patching program

45. Security Patching in ICS
• Good security practice is to apply patches in a
reasonable time after available
– IT / corporate network typically 30 days
– Best in ICS is typically quarterly / 90 days
Question: Can you go from little or no security
patching to applying all patches every 90 days?
Think Efficient Risk Reduction

46. Prioritized Security Patching
• Priority 1 – Computers accessible from corporate
or external network
– Monthly … should be a small number of computers
that are not required for operation
• Priority 2 – Computers accessible from Priority 1
computers
– Quarterly … attackers will compromise Priority 1
computers and pivot
• Priority 3 – Everything else
– Annual … maintain supported system

47. Controversial
• If you can do better, great
– Shorter patching windows are better security, but
– We see many owner/operators fail in patching
• Select some achievable plan, succeed, and then
shorten patching window
• Also … if an attacker can reach a Priority 3
computer he can compromise the ICS even if it is
patched … ICS is insecure by design

48. Know Your Scanner
• These are complex, full feature products
• Default scan configurations will miss a lot of
what you want to know in an assessment
• Take a class from the vendor or skilled teacher

49. Nessus Example 1
• Oracle Default Passwords

50. Nessus Example 2 – USB Usage
• USB Drive Usage

51. Bandolier
• Funded by US Dept. of Energy / Vendors /
Digital Bond
• Identify security settings in ICS applications
• Create Nessus .audit files for use with the
policy compliance plugins
• Distribute through Digital Bond site and
and vendor support channels

52. Bandolier Process
Start with industry best practices for
operating system and common apps
Work with SCADA vendor’s test bed
and top security talent
Verify best practice will not break
the application, modify as necessary
Identify SCADA application security
settings and their optimal values

53. Bandolier Scope
• Underlying operating systems
Similar to other best practice guidance, but addresses
specific control system requirements
A good starting point for all ICS
• Supporting applications
Web servers, database servers, etc…
• Control system application
Has its own security configuration

54. Current Audit Files
Available for these control system applications:
– ABB 800xA
– AREVA e-terra
– CSI UCOS
– Emerson Ovation
– Matrikon OPC
– OSIsoft PI
– Siemens Spectrum
– SNC GENe
– Telvent OASyS DNA

55. Uses for Bandolier
• Asset owners and vendors getting value
• Acceptance testing
• Validation testing
– System upgrades
– Patching
– Configuration changes
• Periodic security testing
• Site audits in response to incidents and issues

56. Bandolier Audit Check Examples
• Has the default ems user account been
removed?
• Are DCOM permissions set correctly for the OPC
server?
• Are the correct SCADA user permissions
assigned?
• Are unneeded ports/services disabled?

57. Bandolier Customization
• Local security policies
Example: Password length/complexity requirements
• Unique system requirements
Example: different set of software installed that requires
a service that would otherwise be disabled
• Additional local user accounts or security groups
May affect ACL’s
• Naming conventions
Example: user/groups/files named differently and need
to be changed in audit file

58. Simple Example

59. Advanced Example

60. Access Control List Objects
• File Access Control Checks
• Registry Access Control Checks
• Service Access Control Checks
• Launch Permission Control Checks
• Launch2 Permission Control Checks
• Access Permission Control Checks

61. List of Windows Items
• Password Policy
• Account Lockout Policy
• Kerberos Policy
• Audit Policy
• Accounts
• Audit
• DCOM
• Devices
• Domain controller
• Domain member
• Interactive logon
• Microsoft network client
• Microsoft network server
• Network access
• Network security
• Recovery console
• System cryptography
• System objects
• System settings
• Event Log

62. List of Unix Custom Items
• CHKCONFIG
• CMD_EXEC
• FILE_CHECK
• FILE_CHECK_NOT
• FILE_CONTENT_CHECK
• FILE_CONTENT_CHECK_NOT
• GRAMMAR_CHECK
• PKG_CHECK
• PROCESS_CHECK
• RPM_CHECK
• SVC_PROP
• XINETD_SVC

63. List of Unix Built In Checks
• min_password_length
• max_password_age
• min_password_age
• root_login_from_console
• accounts_bad_home_permissions
• accounts_without_home_dir
• invalid_login_shells
• login_shells_with_suid
• login_shells_writeable
• login_shells_bad_owner
• passwd_file_consistency
• passwd_zero_uid
• passwd_duplicate_uid
• passwd_duplicate_gid
• passwd_duplicate_username
• passwd_duplicate_home
• passwd_shadowed
• passwd_invalid_gid
• group_file_consistency
• group_zero_gid
• group_duplicate_name
• group_duplicate_gid
• group_duplicate_members
• group_nonexistant_users
• dot_in_root_path_variable
• writeable_dirs_in_root_path_variable
• find_orphan_files
• find_world_writeable_files
• find_world_writeable_directories
• find_suid_sgid_files
• admin_accounts_in_ftpusers

64. Advanced Audit Checks: WMI
• Opens up Windows auditing to a new level
• 1000s of settings available through WMI
• From simple to complex
Antivirus, Windows Firewall, Services, Application Data
• WMI Query Language (WQL)
Subset of SQL with minor changes
• Explore with WMI Administrative Tools

65. WMI: Simple Example

66. WMI: Auditing Services

67. Nessus Compliance Configuration

68. Nessus Compliance Configuration

69. Nessus Compliance Configuration

70. Compliance Checks

71. Nessus Compliance Configuration
– Select Add File browse to location where .audit files
are stored

72. Nmap
• Nmap ("Network Mapper") is a free and open
source utility for network discovery and security
auditing. Many systems and network
administrators also find it useful for tasks such as
network inventory, managing service upgrade
schedules, and monitoring host or service uptime
– http://nmap.org/

73. Nmap Basics
• Discovery of Systems via ARP or ICMP
• Enumeration of systems
– TCP Scanning
– UDP Scanning
– Specifying targets port/s and port ranges
– Scripts and Service Probes
– Other options for control systems

74. Nmap Basics
• Nmap Discovery Via ICMP
– Nmap by default will use TCP probes and ICMP Probes
to attempt if the host is currently online. This is
achieved with the –sP flag
– You can force only ICMP Echo to be used by using the
–PE flag in conjunction with the -sP option

75. Nmap Basics
• Nmap Discovery via ARP
– This will only work if you are on the same layer 2
segment as the host.
– Safest way to discover Control System Devices.
– Utilize the –sP –PR options to achieve an ARP Scan
– Difference is what types of packets are sent, same
results in most cases.

76. Nmap Basics
• Default scanning option is Full TCP SCAN

77. Nmap Basics
• SYN Scanning (Also called half-open, or stealth
scanning)
– -sS option will leave a open connection on the server.
This is bad thing in Control Systems as it may utilize to
many resources and cause an issue.

78. Nmap Basics
• UDP Scanning is unreliable as UDP does is a
connectionless protocol. In some cases a UDP
probe can be sent and a response will be given
however sometimes more advanced scans need
to be performed to get information about UDP
services.

79. Nmap Lab 1
• Run discovery scan on network
– Run Nmap on network to discover assets
– Review Results
• Configure Full TCP Scan
– Run Nmap with options for full TCP scan
– Run Nmap with options for SYN Scan
• Configure default UDP Scan
– Run Nmap on remote host for basic enumeration of
UDP

80. Nmap Basics
• Nmap allows for custom port, and port ranges to
be entered for scanning, this is done with the –p
option.
– A single port can be configured such as –p 22, which
will only look for services running on tcp/22 (ssh)

81. Nmap Basics
• Multiple Ports
– Utilize the –p option then separate ports by comma

82. Nmap Basics
• If you want to perform a scan on a range, you can use
an dash.

83. Nmap Basics
• Nmap Service Enumeration allows you to
determine what the service that is running is. To
achieve this you can use the –sV option to run
the Version Probes.

84. Nmap Basics
• More Accurate UDP Scanning is also done buy
using the –sV option as it will preform queries for
a number of UDP based Protocols.

85. Nmap Basics
• The –A option will enable OS detection, version
detection, script scanning, and traceroute.

86. Nmap Basics
• Again with SNMP You can gather a lot of
information about a host, if the host is using a
default community string, or if you know the
community string, Nmap can pull information
such as Netstats from the hosts.

87. Nmap Basics

88. Nmap Basics
• To run a single script, the --script option followed
by the script you would like to use. The scripts
are found at http://nmap.org/nsedoc/

89. Nmap Lab 2
• Nmap a single port
• Nmap multiple ports
• Configure Nmap to run Service Enumerations
– Run Service Probes
– Run default Nmap Scripts
• Configure Nmap to run single Nmap Scripts
– Run a single Nmap Script on a port of interest

90. Redpoint
• Redpoint is a Digital Bond research project to
enumerate ICS applications and devices.
Redpoint is used to pull information that would
be helpful in secondary testing. The Redpoint
Nmap Scripts use legitimate protocol or
application commands to discover and
enumerate devices and applications. There is no
effort to exploit or crash anything. However
many ICS devices and applications are fragile
and can crash or respond in an unexpected way
to any unexpected traffic so use with care.

91. Redpoint
• Public Scripts Include:
– BACnet (Building Automation and Control Networks)
– Ethernet/IP
– Siemens S7 Communications
– Modicon
• https://github.com/digitalbond/Redpoint/

92. Redpoint
• An example of a Redpoint Script is the BACnet
script that Digital Bond has written. Much as
before you will use the --script argument, and
the specific port you want to test using the –p
option.

93. Redpoint
• Windows
– After downloading BACnet-discover-enumerate.nse
you'll need to move it into the NSE Scripts directory,
this will have to be done as an administrator. Go to
Start -> Programs -> Accessories, and right click on
'Command Prompt'. Select 'Run as Administrator'.
• move BACnet-discover-enumerate.nse C:Program Files
(x86)Nmapscripts
• Linux
– After Downloading BACnet-discover-enumerate.nse
you'll need to move it into the NSE Scripts directory,
this will have to be done as sudo/root.
• sudo mv BACnet-discover-enumerate.nse /usr/share/nmap/
scripts

94. Service Probes
• Nmap has preconfigured many services that will
be queried based off a packet sent and the
response that is given. This file is the nmap-services-
probes file found in the main directory
where Nmap was installed. However, there is a
lack of control system protocols that can be
probed, an example of a new probe for BACnet
looks like.

95. Nmap Lab 3
• Run BACnet Redpoint script against target
– Basic scan
– Scan with –script-args
• Review Service Probes File
– Create Nmap Service Probe for BACnet
• C:Program Files (x86)Nmap
• /usr/share/nmap/
• Run only service probes looking for BACnet

96. Shodan
• Shodan is a search engine that lets the user find
specific types of computers (routers, servers,
etc.) connected to the internet using a variety of
filters. It is best described it as a search engine
of service banners.

97. Shodan
• Free Accounts Allow you Basic Searches
• Upgrades to add SSL ports and the ability to use
the API
• Shodan crawls the internet every 30 days for
banners
– Ports include 80, 443, 145, 21, 23, 1433, 502, 102,
44818, 47808.

98. Shodan
• Basic String Search for PLCs
– Simatic
– Schneider
– Rockwell
– etc

100. Shodan
• Filters
– city – Can be used to filter results by city
– country – Can be used to filter results by city
– net – Can be used to filter results by subnets
– port – Can be used to filter results by specific ports
– before/ after – Can be used to filter results by when
they were added into Shodan
– org – Can be used to filter results by Organization
who owns the address space.

101. Shodan

103. Shodan Lab
• Find ICS Devices in your town
– Utilize the port: option and the city: option
• Look for ICS Devices that May belong to your
company
– Utilize the port: option and the org: option
• Look for other interesting ICS devices that may
be of interest
– Play with Filters and see if you can find something
good.

104. Random Data Fuzzing
• ICS vendors historically only performed positive
testing
– Does the application or device perform properly when
receiving a legitimate command or packet
• Hackers, scanners, new applications may send
something unexpected
– Will the application/device handle the “error” properly
– Or will it crash
• This is a crude test
– Not intelligent fuzzing that the vendor should perform

105. Secondary Testing
• May not be necessary
– Usually required after an ICS security program has
been running for 2 to 3 years
– An attacker will take the easiest path to success
• Specialized tools and techniques
– Web application testing
– Database testing
– Password cracking
– Man-in-the-middle / ARP spoofing

106. Proof of Concept Exploits
• If assessor is uncertain if vulnerability can be
exploited
– Eliminate false positives
– Should be attempted to accurately determine risk
– Denial of service vs. remotely run attacker code
• Prove the danger of missing security patches /
default credentials / other vulnerabilities
– Show the Operator Station on your laptop
– Attack compromise and pivot

108. How Many Assessments?
What if you have 50 or 100 factories or plants?
Should you perform an ICS security assessment at
each factory or plant?

109. Recommendation
• Pick 3 to 5 different sites
– Pick a variety of size and types of plants
– Select a representative sample
– Perform assessments on the samples
• Identify the common high priority findings
• Define a common set of required security controls
– Not too much in the first year
• Define how the controls will be audited
• Add additional controls in years 2, 3, …

110. Questions