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Content Assessment: CISA Statement and Update: CISA Statement and Update: The "Log4j" Vulnerability
Information - 89%
Insight - 89%
Relevance - 95%
Objectivity - 90%
Authority - 98%
92%
Excellent
A short percentage-based assessment of the qualitative benefit of the post highlighting the CISA statement and update on the "Log4j" vulnerability.
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Media Release
Statement from CISA Director Jen Easterly on “Log4j” Vulnerability
Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Director Jen Easterly released the following statement today [December 11, 2021] on the “log4j” vulnerability:
“CISA is working closely with our public and private sector partners to proactively address a critical vulnerability affecting products containing the log4j software library. This vulnerability, which is being widely exploited by a growing set of threat actors, presents an urgent challenge to network defenders given its broad use. End users will be reliant on their vendors, and the vendor community must immediately identify, mitigate, and patch the wide array of products using this software. Vendors should also be communicating with their customers to ensure end-users know that their product contains this vulnerability and should prioritize software updates.
“We are taking urgent action to drive mitigation of this vulnerability and detect any associated threat activity. We have added this vulnerability to our catalog of known exploited vulnerabilities, which compels federal civilian agencies — and signals to non-federal partners — to urgently patch or remediate this vulnerability. We are proactively reaching out to entities whose networks may be vulnerable and are leveraging our scanning and intrusion detection tools to help government and industry partners identify exposure to or exploitation of the vulnerability.”
“The Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative is designed to manage this kind of risk. We have established a JCDC senior leadership group to coordinate collective action and ensure shared visibility into both the prevalence of this vulnerability and threat activity. By bringing together key government and private sector partners via the JCDC, including our partners at the FBI and NSA, we will ensure that our country’s strongest capabilities are brought to bear in an integrated manner against this risk. To ensure the broadest possible dissemination of key information, we are also convening a national call with critical infrastructure stakeholders on Monday afternoon where CISA’s experts provide further insight and address questions.
“We continue to urge all organizations to review the latest CISA current activity alert and upgrade to log4j version 2.15.0, or apply their appropriate vendor recommended mitigations immediately.”
“To be clear, this vulnerability poses a severe risk. We will only minimize potential impacts through collaborative efforts between the government and the private sector. We urge all organizations to join us in this essential effort and take action.”
CISA recommends asset owners take three additional, immediate steps regarding this vulnerability:
1. Enumerate any external-facing devices that have log4j installed.
2. Make sure that your security operations center is actioning every single alert on the devices that fall into the category above.
3. Install a web application firewall (WAF) with rules that automatically update so that your SOC is able to concentrate on fewer alerts.
This effort also underscores the urgency of building software securely from the start and more widespread use of Software Bill of Materials (SBOM), both of which were directed by President Biden in his Executive Order issued in May 2021. A SBOM would provide end-users will the transparency they require to know if their products rely on vulnerable software libraries.
Read the original announcement.
Webpage Resource
Apache Log4j Vulnerability Guidance
Summary
CISA and its partners, through the Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative, are responding to active, widespread exploitation of a critical remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability (CVE-2021-44228) in Apache’s Log4j software library, versions 2.0-beta9 to 2.14.1, known as “Log4Shell” and “Logjam.” Log4j is very broadly used in a variety of consumer and enterprise services, websites, and applications—as well as in operational technology products—to log security and performance information. An unauthenticated remote actor could exploit this vulnerability to take control of an affected system.
Apache released Log4j version 2.15.0 in a security update to address this vulnerability. However, in order for the vulnerability to be remediated in products and services that use affected versions of Log4j, the maintainers of those products and services must implement this security update. Users of such products and services should refer to the vendors of these products/services for security updates. Given the severity of the vulnerability and the likelihood of an increase in exploitation by sophisticated cyber threat actors, CISA urges vendors and users to take the following actions.
Vendors
- Immediately identify, mitigate, and patch affected products using Log4j.
- Inform your end-users of products that contain this vulnerability and strongly urge them to prioritize software updates.
Affected Organizations
- In addition to the immediate actions—to (1) enumerate external-facing devices that have Log4j, (2) ensure your SOC actions alerts on these devices, and (3) install a WAF with rules that automatically update—as noted in the box above, review CISA’s upcoming GitHub repository for a list of affected vendor information and apply software updates as soon as they are available. See Actions for Organizations Running Products with Log4j below for additional guidance. Note: CISA has added CVE-2021-44228 to the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog, which was created according to Binding Operational Directive (BOD) 22-01: Reducing the Significant Risk of Known Exploited Vulnerabilities. In accordance with BOD 22-01, federal civilian executive branch agencies must mitigate CVE-2021-44228 by December 24, 2021.
To review the latest update, visit the CISA Apache Log4j Vulnerability Guidance webpage.
Additional Reading
- Defining Cyber Discovery? A Definition and Framework
- Cybersecurity Challenges for Artificial Intelligence: Considering the AI Lifecycle
Source: ComplexDiscovery