Security Flaws Found in Majority of SCADA Mobile Apps

Researchers from IOActive and Embedi have conducted an analysis of SCADA mobile applications from 34 vendors and found vulnerabilities in a vast majority of them, including flaws that can be exploited to influence industrial processes. Two years ago, researchers Alexander Bolshev and Ivan Yushkevich analyzed 20 mobile apps designed to work with industrial control systems (ICS) software and hardware. At the time, they had found roughly 50 security issues – at least one in each application. Bolshev, who now works for IOActive, and Yushkevich, currently an employee of Embedi, have once again decided to analyze mobile applications used for supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems in an effort to determine how the landscape has evolved now that the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) has become more prevalent.