CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2023-2637 — Rockwell Automation's FactoryTalk System Services uses a hard-coded cryptographic key to generate administrator cookies

High CVSS 8.2

Rockwell Automation's FactoryTalk System Services uses a hard-coded cryptographic key to generate administrator cookies. Hard-coded cryptographic key may lead to privilege escalation. This vulnerability may allow a local, authenticated non-admin user to generate an invalid administrator cookie giving them administrative privileges to the FactoryTalk Policy Manger database. This may allow the threat actor to make malicious changes to the database that will be deployed when a legitimate FactoryTalk Policy Manager user deploys a security policy model. User interaction is required for this vulnerability to be successfully exploited.

Severity
High
CVSS
8.2 (3.1)
Published
2023-06-13
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
software/application
Weaknesses
CWE-321, CWE-798

Affected products

  • rockwellautomation / factorytalk_policy_manager / 6.11.0
  • rockwellautomation / factorytalk_system_services / 6.11.0

Matched remediation archetype

Authentication bypass and missing authentication

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Check exposure

  • Map every affected endpoint and protocol path, including alternate ports, legacy routes, recovery flows, service accounts, and machine-to-machine access.
  • Confirm which deployments enable the affected authentication mode and whether the interface is reachable from untrusted networks.
  • Review session, token, credential, and proxy trust configuration without attempting account takeover.

Remediate safely

  • Apply the supported fix and centralize fail-closed authentication before protected request handling.
  • Remove default or embedded credentials, rotate affected secrets and sessions, and bind authentication decisions to the intended audience and channel.
  • Add negative tests for alternate routes, malformed or absent credentials, recovery flows, and proxy-derived identity.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

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