On December 10th, 2021, the National Vulnerability Database (NVD) published the CVE-2021-44228 documenting a vulnerability in the Apache log4j library Java Naming and Directory Interface (JNDI) lookup feature allowing for remote code execution by an attacker who is able to manipulate log messages. A proof of concept was released on December 9th, 2021, and active scanning and exploitation attempts have increased through the time of the publishing of this brief.

A previously unknown zero-day vulnerability in Log4j 2.x has been reported on December 9, 2021. If your organization deploys or uses Java applications or hardware running Log4j 2.x your organization is likely affected.

Here’s the reality: hybrid and remote work are here to stay. This means access to your corporate data can now come from anywhere, on any device and any network. In order to tackle this new norm, Gartner has defined a new cybersecurity framework called Secure Access Service Edge (SASE).

The way in which we respond to email security risks needs to change. It’s no longer a case of reinforcing the network perimeter. The risks are now far more complex and nuanced, driven by human behaviour. From every conversation we have, Security and IT leaders tell us that people: These are a combination of both inbound and outbound threats but what they have in common is that they are human-activated risks – there’s a person behind each of them.

To understand how Elastic is currently assessing internal risk of this vulnerability in our products please see the advisory here.

The NVD currently lacks a CVSS score for this vulnerability, but the Synopsys Cybersecurity Research Center (CyRC) has issued a corresponding Black Duck® Security Advisory (BDSA), and assigned a CVSS score of 9.1, with links to proof-of-concept exploits. A dangerous, zero day exploit has been identified in log4j, a popular Java logging library. Apache log4j/log4j2 is broadly used within the Java community to implement application logging.

The Splunk Threat Research Team recently updated the Active Directory Lateral Movement analytic story to help security operations center (SOC) analysts detect adversaries executing these techniques within Windows Active Directory (AD) environments. In this blog post, we’ll describe some of the detection opportunities available to cyber defenders and highlight detections from the analytic story.