Siemens fixes industrial flaws found by hacker

Siemens has fixed bugs in its Simatic S7 industrial computer systems, used to control machines on factory floors, power stations and chemical plants.

The patches, released Friday, mark Siemens' first response to a high-profile computer security incident since the Stuxnet worm, which was discovered a year ago circulating on computer networks in Iran.

Siemens fixed a pair of flaws in the S7-1200 controller, acknowledging that one could be leveraged to take control of the system using what's known as a replay attack. A second flaw, in a Web server that ships with the device, could give attackers a way to crash the system. However, the attacker would have to first find a way onto the victim's network before launching these attacks.

Siemens had been scrambling to fix the bugs since they were discovered earlier this year by Dillon Beresford, a researcher with security vendor NSS Labs. Beresford had hoped to discuss the issues at a May hacking conference in Dallas, but pulled out of the event when it became clear that Siemens could not fix the problem in time.