This is a crazy, developing story. And here you thought *your* organization's patch management routines were strict: From Christopher Kunz at Heise:

"A serious security vulnerability in the Windchill and FlexPLM products prompted a nationwide police response over the weekend. At the behest of the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), officers from across Germany were dispatched to alert affected companies – an unprecedented move. Administrators, whose weekends were disrupted, expressed their irritation – some of whom don't even use the compromised software."

"When the editorial team received a tip late Sunday morning about a critical security vulnerability in Windchill and FlexPLM , it sounded like a routine report: A deserialization vulnerability in specialized software, even with a CVSS score of 10, doesn't cause any alarm at heise security. The situation was apparently quite different at the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA): By that time, they had already alerted the state criminal police offices (LKA) in various federal states, which dispatched police officers to affected companies during the night. As several readers reported to us in the forum , police officers were standing outside company and private premises in the dead of night."

https://www.heise.de/news/WTF-Polizei-rueckte-Samstagnacht-wegen-Zero-Day-aus-11221345.html

WTF: Polizei rückte Samstagnacht wegen Zero-Day aus

Wegen der Sicherheitslücke in Windchill und ZeroPLM schickten mehrere Landeskriminalämter Polizeibeamte zu betroffenen Unternehmen. Die sind irritiert.

heise online
@briankrebs WindChill and Flex sounds like the opposite of Netflix and Chill
@briankrebs news from the department of 'That escalated quickly!"
@briankrebs as NIS-2 registration is mandatory for any important or essential company since 06th of March they could've just sent an email or called the contacts listed there...I don't know what made them believe that this is the correct way to respond to this kind of incident.
@briankrebs the colleague pick up the phone Zero dark thirty thought this is a SCAM and asked for authentification, a police car arrived the cops handover a business card from the cyber detective - crazy

@Frank_Juston @briankrebs

MrCopilot,
Cyber Detective

rolls off the tongue...

@briankrebs @HonkHase did you hear about that one already? 😁 German BKA doing cyber things
@disco3000 @HonkHase Ich dachte, genau dafür gibt es die NIS-2-Registrierung in Verbindung mit BSIG 28, anscheinend braucht es die gar nicht 🤓
@sigi714 @HonkHase ha ha vermutlich bekamen genau die Firmen, die sich NIS2-registriert haben, Besuch 🤭
@briankrebs
Either this was bureaucratic overkill, or they noticed something dangerous that they're not willing to disclose yet?

@briankrebs

Remember that movie, Independence Day? A brilliant coder saves the Earth from evil aliens, by infecting their machines with a virus.

However, one alien slipped away in the confusion of the battle. He/she/it/they have quietly infected Homo sapiens with a virus which gradually converts the whole species into Homo dummkopf.

@briankrebs wow, but for real

WTF

@stux do we ever read "Police knocks on door of CEO of company that produced zero day bug" ? @briankrebs
@stux I think publishing software that contains bugs should be a criminal offence. Maybe use CVSS rating and customer base size as a means to decide penalties. @briankrebs

@briankrebs

and i thought *PAGERS* were annoying/disruptive... ;)

Those products manage the Bill Of Materials, blueprints and assembly instructions of tens of thousands of top of the markets products from consumer appliances to cars to industrial tools. It's not unthinkable that a privilege escalation could jeopardize most European manufacturing and take factories down. Compare: Stuxnet, but untargeted.
@briankrebs

@briankrebs
At first I thought that 0day must have a CVSS of 11.0 or 12.0 or maybe even 15.0. But in the meantime I think the vulnerability disclosure process at PTC completely got out of control.

We may be witnessing the birth of a new verb: PTCing for totally overreacting...

@briankrebs I get it that zero day patches (if available) are important. But how many police officers stood on the doorstep of PTC, who was responsible for producing the buggy code in the first place ?

@briankrebs guten abend hier das LKA
wir sind hier weil die software ihrer firma unsicher ist.
bitte updaten

hahahahahhahafuck