Nine vulnerabilities in critical infrastructure used by 80% of major hospitals in North America.
PwnedPiper
Nine vulnerabilities in critical infrastructure used by 80% of major hospitals in North America.
Swisslog’s Translogic Pneumatic Tube System (PTS), a solution that plays a crucial role in patient care, found vulnerable to devastating attack.
By Ben Seri and Barak Hadad
Inner Hero for Research Page 735×460
FINAL NOTES
What was discovered?
Armis researchers have identified a set of nine critical vulnerabilities in the leading solution for pneumatic tube systems (PTS) in North America – the Translogic PTS system by Swisslog Healthcare. This system is used in over 80% of hospitals in North America, and installed in more than 3,000 hospitals worldwide. PTS systems play a crucial role in patient care, and are utilized nearly 100% of the time.
Dubbed PwnedPiper, the vulnerabilities allow for complete take over of the Translogic Nexus Control Panel, which powers all current models of Translogic PTS stations. Older IP-connected Translogic stations are also impacted, but are no longer supported by Swisslog.
This blog will provide a high-level overview of this research and its implications. Additional material is available here:
Technical Research Paper on the PwnedPiper vulnerabilities
White paper on how Armis helps healthcare institutions with operational considerations to drive cyber resilience
Swisslog’s security advisories on the discovered vulnerabilities
Why is this important?
The Swisslog PTS system is vital to hospital operations as it automates logistics and the transport of materials throughout the hospital via a network of pneumatic tubes. The system is designed so that hospitals can provide better patient care with automated material transport that includes highly sensitive materials such as lab specimens, blood products, pathology lab tests, medications, and more. Prior to the use of PTS systems, hospitals were required to transfer the various items manually. Today due to their wide adoption, these systems are vital for proper workflow of hospital operations.
The process:
Armis reported the vulnerabilities to Swisslog on May 1, 2021, and has worked with them ever since to fully understand the impact of the vulnerabilities, develop and test a patch that would remediate them, and develop mitigation steps until a patch is installed.
Swisslog Healthcare has released a security advisory today, that is available here.
See our proposed mitigation steps and how the Armis platform detects and mitigates these vulnerabilities below.
How could PwnedPiper be used?
These vulnerabilities can enable an unauthenticated attacker to take over Translogic PTS stations and essentially gain complete control over the PTS network of a target hospital. This type of control could enable sophisticated and worrisome ransomware attacks, as well as allow attackers to leak sensitive hospital information.
The Translogic PTS system is an advanced system that integrates with other hospital systems, which may allow the information shared between these systems to be leaked or manipulated by an attacker if the Translogic PTS network were to be compromised.
Here are examples of such advanced features, and the risks they entail:
The PTS system includes the WhoTube integration with a hospital’s access control system. This integration allows authentication of staff members using their RFID cards, limiting access to PTS stations, and allowing the use of Secure Transfers, in which carriers are released to a certain individual only when they present their RFID card and/or password. While these types of advanced features enhance the physical security of the system, they also expose staff records and their RFID credentials to potential attackers, if the PTS system were to be compromised.
The PTS system supports variable speed transactions which, on the one hand allow for express shipment of urgent items, while on the other, enable the slow transfer of sensitive items, such as blood products that may be harmed if jolted too quickly within the tubes. If an attacker were to compromise the PTS system, he may alter the system’s speed restrictions, which can in turn damage such sensitive items.
The PTS system offers an alert messaging solution that may integrate with the hospital’s communication solutions, enabling the notification and tracking of delivered carriers, and alerting the PTS system’s maintenance crew to any faults in the system. Abusing these communications can interfere with the hospital’s workflows.
Lastly, compromising the PTS network can allow an attacker to control the carrier’s paths by acting as a man-in-the-middle, and altering the requested destinations of the carriers when a transaction request is sent to the PTS network’s central server. Combining one or more of the described primitives above can allow for a devastating ransomware attack to be unleashed. The attacker can either re-route carriers, derailing the operations of the hospital, or halt the system altogether. The most severe of the discovered vulnerabilities (CVE-2021-37160) can allow an attacker to maintain persistence on compromised PTS stations via their unsecure firmware upgrade procedure, allowing him to hold the stations hostage until a ransom is paid.
While such an attack may ultimately be remediated with manual firmware upgrades of all compromised stations, such a process will take considerable time and effort. Hospitals don’t necessarily have any contingency in place to handle a prolonged shutdown of the PTS system, which ultimately may translate to harm to patient care.
How Armis can Help
Today’s healthcare delivery organizations operate on more than traditional IT systems and connected medical devices. There also exists secondary technology and machines that serve as the infrastructure which facilitates the continuous delivery of patient care. In addition to the Translogic PTS system, hospitals also rely upon elevator control systems in the context of patient movement, temperature control sensors for vaccine storage, gas control systems for suction and oxygen delivery and more. As these critical infrastructure elements connect to the network, they also become targets for exploitation.
Current security measures, including traditional endpoint protection and network security solutions are simply not designed to protect this infrastructure or identify these types of attacks. The Armis platform has been purpose-built to identify vulnerabilities like PwnedPiper and will help in the following ways:
Armis can search for and identify the various components of the Swisslog system, providing complete visibility to the PTS elements.
Nine vulnerabilities in critical infrastructure used by 80% of major hospitals in North America.
Swisslog’s Translogic Pneumatic Tube System (PTS), a solution that plays a crucial role in patient care, found vulnerable to devastating attack.
By Ben Seri and Barak Hadad
Inner Hero for Research Page 735×460
FINAL NOTES
What was discovered?
Armis researchers have identified a set of nine critical vulnerabilities in the leading solution for pneumatic tube systems (PTS) in North America – the Translogic PTS system by Swisslog Healthcare. This system is used in over 80% of hospitals in North America, and installed in more than 3,000 hospitals worldwide. PTS systems play a crucial role in patient care, and are utilized nearly 100% of the time.
Dubbed PwnedPiper, the vulnerabilities allow for complete take over of the Translogic Nexus Control Panel, which powers all current models of Translogic PTS stations. Older IP-connected Translogic stations are also impacted, but are no longer supported by Swisslog.
This blog will provide a high-level overview of this research and its implications. Additional material is available here:
Technical Research Paper on the PwnedPiper vulnerabilities
White paper on how Armis helps healthcare institutions with operational considerations to drive cyber resilience
Swisslog’s security advisories on the discovered vulnerabilities
Why is this important?
The Swisslog PTS system is vital to hospital operations as it automates logistics and the transport of materials throughout the hospital via a network of pneumatic tubes. The system is designed so that hospitals can provide better patient care with automated material transport that includes highly sensitive materials such as lab specimens, blood products, pathology lab tests, medications, and more. Prior to the use of PTS systems, hospitals were required to transfer the various items manually. Today due to their wide adoption, these systems are vital for proper workflow of hospital operations.
The process:
Armis reported the vulnerabilities to Swisslog on May 1, 2021, and has worked with them ever since to fully understand the impact of the vulnerabilities, develop and test a patch that would remediate them, and develop mitigation steps until a patch is installed.
Swisslog Healthcare has released a security advisory today, that is available here.
See our proposed mitigation steps and how the Armis platform detects and mitigates these vulnerabilities below.
How could PwnedPiper be used?
These vulnerabilities can enable an unauthenticated attacker to take over Translogic PTS stations and essentially gain complete control over the PTS network of a target hospital. This type of control could enable sophisticated and worrisome ransomware attacks, as well as allow attackers to leak sensitive hospital information.
The Translogic PTS system is an advanced system that integrates with other hospital systems, which may allow the information shared between these systems to be leaked or manipulated by an attacker if the Translogic PTS network were to be compromised.
Here are examples of such advanced features, and the risks they entail:
The PTS system includes the WhoTube integration with a hospital’s access control system. This integration allows authentication of staff members using their RFID cards, limiting access to PTS stations, and allowing the use of Secure Transfers, in which carriers are released to a certain individual only when they present their RFID card and/or password. While these types of advanced features enhance the physical security of the system, they also expose staff records and their RFID credentials to potential attackers, if the PTS system were to be compromised.
The PTS system supports variable speed transactions which, on the one hand allow for express shipment of urgent items, while on the other, enable the slow transfer of sensitive items, such as blood products that may be harmed if jolted too quickly within the tubes. If an attacker were to compromise the PTS system, he may alter the system’s speed restrictions, which can in turn damage such sensitive items.
The PTS system offers an alert messaging solution that may integrate with the hospital’s communication solutions, enabling the notification and tracking of delivered carriers, and alerting the PTS system’s maintenance crew to any faults in the system. Abusing these communications can interfere with the hospital’s workflows.
Lastly, compromising the PTS network can allow an attacker to control the carrier’s paths by acting as a man-in-the-middle, and altering the requested destinations of the carriers when a transaction request is sent to the PTS network’s central server. Combining one or more of the described primitives above can allow for a devastating ransomware attack to be unleashed. The attacker can either re-route carriers, derailing the operations of the hospital, or halt the system altogether. The most severe of the discovered vulnerabilities (CVE-2021-37160) can allow an attacker to maintain persistence on compromised PTS stations via their unsecure firmware upgrade procedure, allowing him to hold the stations hostage until a ransom is paid.
While such an attack may ultimately be remediated with manual firmware upgrades of all compromised stations, such a process will take considerable time and effort. Hospitals don’t necessarily have any contingency in place to handle a prolonged shutdown of the PTS system, which ultimately may translate to harm to patient care.
How Armis can Help
Today’s healthcare delivery organizations operate on more than traditional IT systems and connected medical devices. There also exists secondary technology and machines that serve as the infrastructure which facilitates the continuous delivery of patient care. In addition to the Translogic PTS system, hospitals also rely upon elevator control systems in the context of patient movement, temperature control sensors for vaccine storage, gas control systems for suction and oxygen delivery and more. As these critical infrastructure elements connect to the network, they also become targets for exploitation.
Current security measures, including traditional endpoint protection and network security solutions are simply not designed to protect this infrastructure or identify these types of attacks. The Armis platform has been purpose-built to identify vulnerabilities like PwnedPiper and will help in the following ways:
Armis can search for and identify the various components of the Swisslog system, providing complete visibility to the PTS elements.
