CVE-2025-10205 is a critical vulnerability identified in ABB's FLXEON product line, affecting versions up to and including 9.3.5 and newer. The vulnerability is categorized under CWE-759, which involves the use of a one-way hash function combined with a predictable salt. In cryptographic practices, salts are random data added to inputs before hashing to ensure that identical inputs produce different hashes, thereby protecting against precomputed hash attacks such as rainbow tables. However, if the salt is predictable, attackers can precompute hashes or otherwise reverse-engineer hashed values, undermining the security of stored credentials or sensitive data. The CVSS 4.0 score of 9.4 reflects the critical nature of this vulnerability, with an attack vector classified as adjacent network (AV:A), low attack complexity (AC:L), no privileges required (PR:N), and no user interaction (UI:N). The vulnerability impacts confidentiality, integrity, and availability at a high level, indicating that exploitation could lead to significant unauthorized data disclosure, data manipulation, or service disruption. The vulnerability does not currently have known exploits in the wild, but the ease of exploitation and the critical severity suggest that it could be targeted by threat actors soon. The lack of available patches at the time of publication increases the urgency for mitigation. Given that FLXEON is an industrial automation product used in process control and manufacturing environments, exploitation could have severe operational consequences, including potential disruption of industrial processes and safety risks.

For European organizations, particularly those in manufacturing, energy, utilities, and critical infrastructure sectors, this vulnerability poses a significant risk. ABB FLXEON is widely deployed in industrial control systems (ICS) and distributed control systems (DCS) across Europe. Exploitation could allow attackers to bypass authentication mechanisms or manipulate control parameters by reversing hashed credentials or sensitive configuration data. This could lead to unauthorized access, operational downtime, safety incidents, or data breaches. The impact extends beyond IT systems to physical processes, potentially affecting production lines, energy distribution, or water treatment facilities. Given the critical nature of these sectors in Europe’s economy and public safety, the vulnerability could have cascading effects on supply chains and essential services. Additionally, the vulnerability's exploitation could be leveraged in targeted attacks by nation-state actors or cybercriminal groups aiming to disrupt European industrial capabilities or extort organizations through ransomware or sabotage.

Organizations should immediately conduct an inventory to identify all instances of ABB FLXEON in their environments and determine the versions in use. Since no patches are currently available, mitigation should focus on compensating controls: 1) Restrict network access to FLXEON systems by implementing strict network segmentation and firewall rules to limit exposure to adjacent networks only to trusted devices. 2) Employ strong monitoring and anomaly detection on FLXEON systems to detect unauthorized access attempts or unusual behavior indicative of exploitation. 3) Where possible, enforce multi-factor authentication (MFA) on management interfaces to reduce the risk of credential compromise. 4) Review and harden configuration settings to minimize reliance on hashed credentials or sensitive data that could be exposed. 5) Engage with ABB for timely updates and patches and plan for rapid deployment once available. 6) Conduct employee training focused on recognizing and reporting suspicious activity related to industrial control systems. 7) Consider deploying intrusion prevention systems (IPS) with signatures or heuristics tailored to detect exploitation attempts of this vulnerability.