BD Warns of Vulnerabilities in its Alaris Guardrails Suite MX Infusion Pumps
Becton, Dickinson, and Co. and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) have issued advisories about 8 recently identified vulnerabilities in BD Alaris Guardrails Suite MX, which could be exploited by malicious actors to gain access to sensitive data and impact the availability of devices. The flaws were identified by BD during routine internal security testing and were shared with CISA, the FDA, and Information Sharing and Analysis Organizations (ISAOs) under its responsible disclosure policy. BD performed risk assessments and determined that while there is a potential safety impact, the risks associated with all 8 of the vulnerabilities can be effectively mitigated by implementing the recommended control measures.
The 8 vulnerabilities affect the BD Alaris System v12.1.3 and earlier versions and include 1 high-severity, 5 medium-severity, and 2 low-severity vulnerabilities. BD said no evidence has been found to indicate any of the vulnerabilities have been exploited to date; however, there is a low attack complexity so the recommended steps should be taken to reduce the risk of exploitation.
The most serious vulnerability – CVE-2023-30563 (CVSS 8.2) – is a cross-site scripting issue due to improper neutralization of input during web page generation. A malicious actor could exploit the flaw to upload a malicious file to the BD Alaris Systems Manager user import function and hijack a session.
CVE-2023-30564 (CVSS 6.9) is a cross-site scripting vulnerability due to the failure of the Alaris Systems Manager to perform input validation during the device import function, and could be exploited to load a malicious payload and therefore has an impact beyond Systems Manager; however, an attacker would need to be on an adjacent network to exploit the vulnerability.
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CVE-2023-30560 (CVSS 6.8) is due to a lack of authentication for PCU configuration which has a high impact to confidentiality, integrity, and availability; however, exploitation is only possible with physical access to the BD Alaris PCU. Successful exploitation would allow the configuration to be modified without authentication.
CVE-2023-30562 (CVSS 6.7) is due to a lack of dataset integrity checking and allows a GRE dataset file within Systems Manager to be tampered with and distributed to PCUs. An attacker would need to be on an adjacent network to exploit the flaw and would need generalized permissions.
CVE-2023-30561 (CVSS 6.1) is due to a lack of cryptographic security of IUI Bus. A threat actor with physical access could potentially read and modify data if a specifically crafted device was attached during infusion.
CVE-2023-30559 (CVSS 5.2) is due to the wireless card firmware being improperly signed, which allows the card to be modified. The flaw could only be exploited with physical access to the BD Alaris PCU.
The two low-severity flaws are a CQI data sniffing issue – CVE-2023-30565 (CVSS 3.5) – that could expose infusion data, and a lack of input validation within Apache Log4Net Calculation Services – CVE-2018-1285 (CVSS 3.0) – which could be exploited to execute malicious commands.
BD has suggested several mitigating and compensating controls in its alert to reduce the potential for exploitation to a low and acceptable level.
