{"id":1340,"date":"2023-12-03T13:13:42","date_gmt":"2023-12-03T10:13:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zerontek.com\/zt\/?p=1340"},"modified":"2023-12-03T13:13:42","modified_gmt":"2023-12-03T10:13:42","slug":"ot-hunt-unitronics-pcom-plc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zerontek.com\/zt\/2023\/12\/03\/ot-hunt-unitronics-pcom-plc\/","title":{"rendered":"OT Hunt: Unitronics PCOM\/PLC"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p><strong>Refrain from connecting (all) PLCs to the internet <\/strong>. WaterISAC<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>This is the 10th topic of \u201c<a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/zerontek.com\/zt\/category\/ot-hunt\/\">OT Hunt<\/a>\u201d. These topics expose ICS\/OT devices that are connected to the internet. The goal is to build an awareness for the ICS community. This kind of research is also a warning message for asset owners and ICS\/OT vendors to secure their their assets\u2019 attack surfaces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In this article, my targets are Unitronics PLC and PCOM protocol. Unitronics is a company that specializes in the design and manufacturing of programmable logic controllers (PLCs) and human-machine interface (HMI) solutions. A Unitronics PLC is a type of industrial automation controller used in various industrial and manufacturing applications to control and automate processes. Whereas PCOM is a protocol used by Unitronics PLC for communication purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The following keywords\/dorks I used to search for Unitronics PLC and PCOM protocol in Shodan search engine simultaneously , please check out my <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/selmux\/ICS-Security\/blob\/main\/ICS-OT-IoT%20dorks\/Unitronics-Shodan\">ICS-OT-iIoT dorks project<\/a> at GitHub:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-code\"><code>Unitronics <\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-code\"><code>Unitronics PCOM<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p>The search for Unitronics yielded 1782 devices, which is a significant number for a PLC to be online. Just a few days ago, the count was 1765. Shodan has tagged them as &#8216;ICS.&#8217; Additionally, the PCOM protocol is online among the above results. The default port for the Unitronics PCOM protocol is:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-code\"><code>20256 \/ TCP<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p>The search for these PLCs became popular among the ICS Cybersecurity community became popular following the Municipal Water Authority of Aliquippa <a href=\"https:\/\/www.waterisac.org\/portal\/tlpclear-water-utility-control-system-cyber-incident-advisory-icsscada-incident-municipal\">incident<\/a>. The PLC device has a default password according to CISA Alert:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-code\"><code>password: 1111<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cisa.gov\/news-events\/alerts\/2023\/11\/28\/exploitation-unitronics-plcs-used-water-and-wastewater-systems\">CISA alert<\/a> stated that the breach happened because those PLCs are connected to the internet and have weak passwords. CISA and WaterISAC gave recommendations for asset owners who have Unitronics PLCs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Luckily I found an Nmap script that is designed to collect device information for Unitronics PLCs via PCOM protocol. It was written by Luis Rosa. I have uploaded it in my ICS-Security project in <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/selmux\/ICS-Security\/blob\/main\/Nmap%20ICS-OT%20Scripts\/cldrn\/pcom-discover.nse\">GitHub<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Let me demonstrate how I used it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-code\"><code>nmap --script pcom-discover.nse --script-args='pcom-discover.aggressive=true' -p 20256 &lt;host&gt;<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p>I noticed that it takes a long time to get result when I use &#8211;script-args . So I decided to remove it and executed the following command:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-code\"><code>nmap --script pcom-discover.nse  -p 20256 &lt;host&gt;<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p>This gave an immediate result like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"495\" height=\"343\" src=\"https:\/\/zerontek.com\/zt\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/image.jpeg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1341\" srcset=\"https:\/\/zerontek.com\/zt\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/image.jpeg 495w, https:\/\/zerontek.com\/zt\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/image-300x208.jpeg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 495px) 100vw, 495px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>That\u2019s it for today\u2019s topic. Happy hacking !<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Refrain from connecting (all) PLCs to the internet . WaterISAC This is the 10th topic of \u201cOT Hunt\u201d. These topics expose ICS\/OT devices that are connected to the internet. The goal is to build an awareness for the ICS community. This kind of research is also a warning message for asset owners and ICS\/OT vendors [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1342,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[170,4,45,3,163,81,168,48,226,67,23,227],"tags":[7,13,6,12,169,47,229,20,100,228,27],"class_list":["post-1340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-attack-surface","category-cyber-security","category-ics-protocols","category-ics-security","category-nmap","category-osint","category-ot-hunt","category-ot-security","category-pcom","category-plc","category-shodan","category-unitronics","tag-cyber-security","tag-ics","tag-ics-security","tag-ot","tag-ot-hunt","tag-ot-security","tag-pcom","tag-shodan","tag-sulaiman-alhasawi","tag-unitronics","tag-zerontek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zerontek.com\/zt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zerontek.com\/zt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zerontek.com\/zt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zerontek.com\/zt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zerontek.com\/zt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1340"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/zerontek.com\/zt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1340\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1345,"href":"https:\/\/zerontek.com\/zt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1340\/revisions\/1345"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zerontek.com\/zt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zerontek.com\/zt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zerontek.com\/zt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zerontek.com\/zt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}