Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

In April 2021, CVE-2022-0847 was discovered by security researcher Max Kellermann; it took another few months for him to figure out what was happening. The flaw has already been patched in the Linux kernel and the Android kernel. Affected Linux distributions are in the process of pushing out security updates with the patch. Due to the similarities of the Dirty Cow flaw, CVE-2016-5195; has been named Dirty Pipe.

2021 was an interesting year for all of us working in IT security. It wasn’t just the spike in supply chain attacks, most notably SolarWinds and Kasaya. It wasn’t just the waves of vulnerabilities leading to privileged access and remote code execution (RCE) in Microsoft Exchange, in printer drivers, externally exposed remote desktop protocol (RDP), and, of course, in OSS projects like Log4J.

On Tuesday, February 8, 2022, SAP patched a critical memory corruption vulnerability (CVE-2022-22536) in the SAP Internet Communication Manager (ICM) component that could lead to full system takeover without authentication or user interaction. The ICM component is present in most SAP products and is an important component in SAP NetWeaver application servers.

-On February 23, 2022, multiple security vendors with a business presence in Ukraine identified a new wiper malware primarily impacting Ukrainian organizations in at least the aviation, defense, financial, and IT services industries. In at least one intrusion, Symantec observed the wiper malware impact devices in Lithuania. -Researchers identified HermeticWiper shortly after a DDoS attack targeted Ukrainian websites earlier that day.

There is already a well-documented history of cyber attacks targeting organizations in Ukraine - including the attack attributed to members of the Russian military intelligence group GRU - NotPetya. This threat actor has previously conducted attacks known as NotPetya, BlackEnergy, and has targeted high-profile events such as the Olympics, as well as perpetrated destructive attacks against Georgia.

Adversaries are becoming more adept and sophisticated in their attacks. Taking advantage of vulnerabilities present in major software is often an attractive entry point for establishing a campaign within an enterprise environment. The CrowdStrike 2022 Global Threat Report highlights how adversaries continue to shift tradecraft and weaponize vulnerabilities to evade detection and gain access to critical applications and infrastructure.

S3 buckets without encryption can leave sensitive data exposed and at risk. As a best practice and to meet a number of industry and governmental regulations, it’s important to ensure that S3 server side bucket encryption has been properly applied at all times. To do this, many security teams rely on their Cloud Posture Security Management (CSPM) platform and/or AWS GuardDuty to monitor their AWS resources and provide alerts when an S3 bucket is found unencrypted.

As security operations leaders, we are burdened with a large responsibility. The expectation is that we can respond to alerts as soon as possible and be able to investigate immediately. It sounds simple, but in today’s cyber threat landscape we are faced with growing threat vectors and a sheer volume increase in overall alerts or notifications. Failure to respond quickly enough or investigate the right areas could result in huge impacts to the organizations we are responsible for.

By now it’s become clear—hybrid and remote work are here to stay. This goes for employees in the government sector as much as it does for those in other industries. Along with increased flexibility, however, comes increased attack surfaces for security professionals to defend.