CISA Discloses Four EPICS Base Flaws, Urges Update to 7.0.11
The bugs affect the open source toolkit behind control systems at particle accelerators and fusion labs. One could allow code execution, though researchers only demonstrated a crash.
CISA published an advisory on Tuesday covering four vulnerabilities in EPICS Base, the central component of the open source toolkit that scientific facilities use to build control systems. The flaws affect EPICS Base 7.0.10 and earlier, and the agency recommends updating to version 7.0.11.
SecurityWeek reported the disclosure on October 28. The bugs were found by Cipher, an autonomous research system built by Causal Security, which identified them in roughly 3 hours and 49 minutes starting with no knowledge of EPICS. Causal says the flaws are between about 14.5 and 31.5 years old. Maintainers were notified in June and merged patches in July and August.
The most severe issue is an integer overflow during network request processing that can produce a wrongly sized memory allocation; handling attacker-supplied data afterward could corrupt memory, cause denial of service, or potentially enable remote code execution. The others involve an out-of-bounds write, an out-of-bounds read that could expose adjacent memory, and a type confusion issue triggered by malformed network data.
Causal co-founder Shubham Raj told SecurityWeek that all four can be triggered without authentication or user interaction, given network access to the vulnerable services, typically on TCP 5064 or 5075. He said code execution was not achieved: the team demonstrated an attacker-controlled out-of-bounds heap write and a process crash using AddressSanitizer, then stopped.
No public exploitation has been reported to CISA. Raj said a brief scan found possible internet-facing candidates by exposed port, but none could be confirmed as EPICS.
For defenders, the practical step is upgrading to 7.0.11 and reviewing which EPICS services are reachable from outside a facility's internal network.
CVE references
Sources
- Long-Hidden Flaws Patched in EPICS Research Facility Control SoftwarePrimarywww.securityweek.com
If something here is wrong, tell us. Every correction is listed on the corrections page.
Don’t Just Read About Cyberattacks. Learn How They Work.
Go beyond the headlines. Explore hands-on cybersecurity labs, understand real-world vulnerabilities, and build practical security skills with HackZoneLabs.
Start Learning