Experiment: Porting a PLC Exploit With AI Takes Hours and Hundreds of Dollars
Researchers at Forescout’s Vedere Labs used Anthropic’s Claude to port a working remote code execution (RCE) exploit from one WAGO programmable logic controller (PLC) to another. They succeeded but only after extensive researcher oversight, several hours of dedicated work, and hundreds of dollars in API costs.
The starting point was a previously developed exploit for the WAGO 750-852 PLC, based on CVE-2021-31886, a pre-authentication buffer overflow in the Nucleus FTP server that allows an unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary ARM shellcode on the targeted PLC.
For their experiment, Forescout researchers set out to adapt that exploit to a related but distinct model, the WAGO 750-831, and to see whether the AI could then push the result further into a full command-and-control implant. The experiment was conducted in the wake of the recent attacks targeting PLCs in the water sector.
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The researchers...
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