Researchers Hack Industrial Robot

It was a miniscule change in parameters – just 2mm – but that tiny deviation delivered to a real robot in a recent hacking experiment could result in a massive product recall or even a major defect in an aircraft design in a real manufacturing scenario. Researchers at Trend Micro and Italy-based Politecnico di Milano today detailed the proof-of-concept attack they conducted on an ABB Robotics IRB140 industrial robot, exploiting a remote code vulnerability they found in the robot's controller software. They fed the robot a phony configuration file that modified its parameters for drawing a straight line. Instead of a perfectly straight line, the robot drew a slightly skewed one, following the 2mm change in instructions. "The code was working as expected, but with the wrong configuration," says Mark Nunnikhoven, Trend Micro's vice president of cloud research.