ZDI-25-1026 - Appleton UPSMON-PRO UDP Stack Overflow RCE
CORTEX Protocol Intelligence Assessment
Business Impact: Appleton UPSMON-PRO instances affected by ZDI-25-1026 represent unauthenticated remote code execution points with SYSTEM privileges inside data centers and industrial sites. Exploitation can lead to prolonged outages, manipulation of power monitoring data, and lateral movement into higher-value OT and IT assets, creating material operational and potentially safety risk for facilities that depend on continuous uptime. Technical Context: The flaw is a classic stack-based buffer overflow in UPSMONProService listening on UDP port 2601, where unvalidated input is copied into a fixed-length stack buffer and allows return address overwrite. Attackers exploiting T1190 and T1068 need only network reachability to the service, making compensating controls such as ACLs, segmentation, and hardened host configurations critical while patches are rolled out.
Strategic Intelligence Guidance
- Identify all Appleton UPSMON-PRO installations, verify their versions, and prioritize patching to 2.0.1 or later on systems connected to production, data center, or OT networks.
- Restrict access to UDP port 2601 using firewall rules and network segmentation so that only designated management jump hosts can communicate with UPSMONProService.
- Deploy endpoint detection and logging around UPSMONProService to alert on abnormal child process creation, service crashes, or memory corruption indicators that may signal exploit attempts.
- Integrate UPS and power-monitoring software into regular vulnerability scanning, configuration review, and change-control processes rather than treating them as unmanaged utility appliances.