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Path Traversal occurrences in Simatic Wincc Runtime
A vulnerability has been identified in SIMATIC HMI Comfort Panels 4" - 22" (All versions < V15 Update 4), SIMATIC HMI Comfort Outdoor Panels 7" & 15" (All versions < V15 Update 4), SIMATIC HMI KTP Mobile Panels KTP400F, KTP700, KTP700F, KTP900 and KTP900F (All versions < V15 Update 4), SIMATIC WinCC Runtime Advanced (All versions < V15 Update 4), SIMATIC WinCC Runtime Professional (All versions < V15 Update 4), SIMATIC WinCC (TIA Portal) (All versions < V15 Update 4), SIMATIC HMI Classic Devices (TP/MP/OP/MP Mobile Panel) (All versions). A directory traversal vulnerability could allow to download arbitrary files from the device. The security vulnerability could be exploited by an attacker with network access to the integrated web server. No user interaction and no authentication is required to exploit the vulnerability. The vulnerability impacts the confidentiality of the device. At the time of advisory publication no public exploitation of this security vulnerability was known. (2018-12-13, CVE-2018-13812)
Why Path Traversal can be dangerous
Relative Path Confusion means that your web server is configured to serve responses to ambiguous URLs. This configuration can possibly cause confusion about the correct relative path for the URL. It is also an issue of resources, such as images, styles etc., which are specified in the response using relative path, not the absolute URL.
If the web browser permits to parse "cross-content" response, the attacker may be able to fool the web browser into interpreting HTML into other content types, which can then lead to a cross site scripting attack (link do XSS).