Security firm Claroty this week announced the availability of AccessDB Parser, an open-source tool that allows researchers to analyze Microsoft Access database files associated with SCADA applications .
The tool was designed to contribute to more efficient scanning of the Claroty Continuous Threat Detection (CTD), which was developed to provide a non-intrusive way to identify and manage assets in OT networks, through the analysis of configuration files and other assets related to industrial control systems (ICS).
AccessDB Parser allows users to easily automate the process of reading and parsing any Access .mdb or .accdb database file.
Uri Katz, senior researcher at Claroty, provided some additional information about the tool: “Project files typically contain important information about the SCADA environment, including the components present on the network, the programs that run those components, and some data about those components.”
As Katz pointed out, every SCADA project has a different configuration, since some vendors use a known and well-documented file structure, while others prefer to develop a proprietary binary structure.
"However, we discovered that many vendors such as Rockwell and Schneider, in some of their SCADA applications, specifically use the AccessDB (mdb) database format to store the information required for project files. By providing an AccessDB parser we are deeply helping the community analyze and extract relevant information from these project files," the researcher said.
Claroty has released the source code of AccessDB Parser on GitHub and created a video showing how it works.
