Siemens SIMATIC S7-1500 Uncontrolled Resource Consumption (CVE-2021-45960)

high Tenable OT Security Plugin ID 504031

Synopsis

The remote OT asset is affected by a vulnerability.

Description

In Expat (aka libexpat) before 2.4.3, a left shift by 29 (or more) places in the storeAtts function in xmlparse.c can lead to realloc misbehavior (e.g., allocating too few bytes, or only freeing memory).

This plugin only works with Tenable.ot.
Please visit https://www.tenable.com/products/tenable-ot for more information.

Solution

Refer to the vendor advisory.

See Also

https://cert-portal.siemens.com/productcert/pdf/ssa-484086.pdf

https://cert-portal.siemens.com/productcert/html/ssa-398330.html

https://support.industry.siemens.com/cs/ww/en/view/109478459/

https://support.industry.siemens.com/cs/ww/en/view/109811169/

Plugin Details

Severity: High

ID: 504031

Version: 1.1

Type: remote

Family: Tenable.ot

Published: 11/13/2025

Updated: 11/13/2025

Supported Sensors: Tenable OT Security

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Medium

Score: 6.7

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 8.8

Temporal Score: 7.9

Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Temporal Vector: CVSS:3.0/E:P/RL:O/RC:C

Vulnerability Information

CPE: cpe:/o:siemens:simatic_s7-1500_cpu_firmware:3.1.5, cpe:/o:siemens:siplus_s7-1500_cpu_firmware:3.1.5

Required KB Items: Tenable.ot/Siemens

Exploit Ease: No known exploits are available

Patch Publication Date: 6/14/2022

Vulnerability Publication Date: 6/14/2022

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2021-45960

CWE: 400