Cybersecurity Alerts

CISA, through the Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative (JCDC), enabled swift, coordinated response and information sharing in the wake of a significant IT outage caused by a CrowdStrike software update. This outage, which impacted government, critical infrastructure, and industry across the globe, led to disruptions in essential services, including air travel, healthcare, and financial operations.

Leveraging its unique ability to bring together public and private sector partners, JCDC facilitated virtual engagements with over 1,000 federal agency representatives. In close collaboration with CrowdStrike, a JCDC partner, CISA provided critical updates, mitigation guidance, and analysis on the potential for malicious exploitation of the outage. This rapid coordination enabled key information to be quickly disseminated across federal networks, helping to expedite mitigation and protect U.S. government systems.

This successful response underscores JCDC’s essential role in uniting industry and government partners to address cyber challenges that could impact national security and resilience. For more information about JCDC’s efforts, visit the JCDC Success Stories webpage and CISA.gov/JCDC.

CISA continues to respond to active exploitation of internet-accessible operational technology (OT) and industrial control systems (ICS) devices, including those in the Water and Wastewater Systems (WWS) Sector. Exposed and vulnerable OT/ICS systems may allow cyber threat actors to use default credentials, conduct brute force attacks, or use other unsophisticated methods to access these devices and cause harm.

CISA urges OT/ICS operators in critical infrastructure sectors to apply the recommendations listed in Defending OT Operations Against Ongoing Pro-Russia Hacktivist Activity to defend against this activity. To learn more about secure by design principles and practices, visit CISA’s Secure by Design webpage. For more information and guidance on protection against the most common and impactful threats, tactics, techniques, and procedures, visit CISA’s Cross-Sector Cybersecurity Performance Goals.

CISA has added five new vulnerabilities to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog, based on evidence of active exploitation.

• CVE-2024-27348 Apache HugeGraph-Server Improper Access Control Vulnerability
• CVE-2020-0618 Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
• CVE-2019-1069 Microsoft Windows Task Scheduler Privilege Escalation Vulnerability
• CVE-2022-21445 Oracle JDeveloper Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
• CVE-2020-14644 Oracle WebLogic Server Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

These types of vulnerabilities are frequent attack vectors for malicious cyber actors and pose significant risks to the federal enterprise.

Binding Operational Directive (BOD) 22-01: Reducing the Significant Risk of Known Exploited Vulnerabilities established the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog as a living list of known Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) that carry significant risk to the federal enterprise. BOD 22-01 requires Federal Civilian Executive Branch (FCEB) agencies to remediate identified vulnerabilities by the due date to protect FCEB networks against active threats. See the BOD 22-01 Fact Sheet for more information.

Although BOD 22-01 only applies to FCEB agencies, CISA strongly urges all organizations to reduce their exposure to cyberattacks by prioritizing timely remediation of Catalog vulnerabilities as part of their vulnerability management practice. CISA will continue to add vulnerabilities to the catalog that meet the specified criteria.

The analysis details a sample attack path including tactics and steps a cyber threat actor could follow to compromise an organization with weaknesses representative of those CISA observed in FY23 RVAs. The infographic highlights the most successful techniques for each tactic that RVAs documented. Both the analysis and infographic map threat actor behavior to the MITRE ATT&CK^®framework.

CISA encourages network defenders to review the analysis and infographic and apply the recommended mitigations to protect against the observed tactics and techniques.

Citrix released security updates to address multiple vulnerabilities in the Citrix Workspace App for Windows. A cyber threat actor could exploit some of these vulnerabilities to take control of an affected system.

CISA encourages users and administrators to review the following and apply necessary updates:

• Citrix Workspace app for Windows Security Bulletin for CVE-2024-7889 and CVE-2024-7890

Today, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)—in partnership with CISA, the National Security Agency (NSA), and other U.S. and international partners—released a joint Cybersecurity Advisory Russian Military Cyber Actors Target U.S. and Global Critical Infrastructure. This advisory provides overlapping cybersecurity industry cyber threat intelligence, tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) and Indicators of Compromise (IOCs) associated with Russian General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) 161st Specialist Training Center (Unit 29155) cyber actors, both during and succeeding their deployment of the WhisperGate malware against Ukraine.These cyber actors are responsible for computer network operations against global targets for the purposes of espionage, sabotage, and reputational harm since at least 2020. The authoring agencies encourage organizations to review this advisory for recommended mitigations against such malicious activity.

For additional information on Russian state-sponsored malicious cyber activity and related indictments, see the recent U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) press release for June 26, 2024, and Sept. 5, 2024, FBI’s Cyber Crime webpage, and CISA’s Russia Cyber Threat Overview and Advisories webpage.

CISA has added one new vulnerability to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog, based on evidence of active exploitation.

• CVE-2024-28986 SolarWinds Web Help Desk Deserialization of Untrusted Data Vulnerability

These types of vulnerabilities are frequent attack vectors for malicious cyber actors and pose significant risks to the federal enterprise.

Binding Operational Directive (BOD) 22-01: Reducing the Significant Risk of Known Exploited Vulnerabilities established the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog as a living list of known Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) that carry significant risk to the federal enterprise. BOD 22-01 requires Federal Civilian Executive Branch (FCEB) agencies to remediate identified vulnerabilities by the due date to protect FCEB networks against active threats. See the BOD 22-01 Fact Sheet for more information.

Although BOD 22-01 only applies to FCEB agencies, CISA strongly urges all organizations to reduce their exposure to cyberattacks by prioritizing timely remediation of Catalog vulnerabilities as part of their vulnerability management practice. CISA will continue to add vulnerabilities to the catalog that meet the specified criteria.

CISA has added two new vulnerabilities to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog, based on evidence of active exploitation.

• CVE-2012-4792 Microsoft Internet Explorer Use-After-Free Vulnerability
• CVE-2024-39891 Twilio Authy Information Disclosure Vulnerability

These types of vulnerabilities are frequent attack vectors for malicious cyber actors and pose significant risks to the federal enterprise.

Binding Operational Directive (BOD) 22-01: Reducing the Significant Risk of Known Exploited Vulnerabilities established the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog as a living list of known Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) that carry significant risk to the federal enterprise. BOD 22-01 requires Federal Civilian Executive Branch (FCEB) agencies to remediate identified vulnerabilities by the due date to protect FCEB networks against active threats. See the BOD 22-01 Fact Sheet for more information.

Although BOD 22-01 only applies to FCEB agencies, CISA strongly urges all organizations to reduce their exposure to cyberattacks by prioritizing timely remediation of Catalog vulnerabilities as part of their vulnerability management practice. CISA will continue to add vulnerabilities to the catalog that meet the specified criteria.

Note: CISA will update this Alert with more information as it becomes available.

As of 1130am EST July 19, 2024:

CISA is aware of the widespread outage affecting Microsoft Windows hosts due to an issue with a recent CrowdStrike update and is working closely with Crowdstrike and federal, state, local, tribal and territorial (SLTT) partners, as well as critical infrastructure and international partners to assess impacts and support remediation efforts. CrowdStrike has confirmed the outage:

• Impacts Windows 10 and later systems.
• Does not impact Mac and Linux hosts.
• Is due to the CrowdStrike Falcon content update and not to malicious cyber activity.

According to CrowdStrike, the issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed. CrowdStrike customer organizations should reference CrowdStrike guidance and their customer portal to resolve the issue.

Of note, CISA has observed threat actors taking advantage of this incident for phishing and other malicious activity. CISA urges organizations and individuals to remain vigilant and only follow instructions from legitimate sources. CISA recommends organizations to remind their employees to avoid clicking on phishing emails or suspicious links.

CISA has added three new vulnerabilities to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog, based on evidence of active exploitation.

• CVE-2024-23692 Rejetto HTTP File Server Improper Neutralization of Special Elements Used in a Template Engine Vulnerability
• CVE-2024-38080 Microsoft Windows Hyper-V Privilege Escalation Vulnerability
• CVE-2024-38112 Microsoft Windows MSHTML Platform Spoofing Vulnerability

These types of vulnerabilities are frequent attack vectors for malicious cyber actors and pose significant risks to the federal enterprise.

Binding Operational Directive (BOD) 22-01: Reducing the Significant Risk of Known Exploited Vulnerabilities established the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog as a living list of known Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) that carry significant risk to the federal enterprise. BOD 22-01 requires Federal Civilian Executive Branch (FCEB) agencies to remediate identified vulnerabilities by the due date to protect FCEB networks against active threats. See the BOD 22-01 Fact Sheet for more information.

Although BOD 22-01 only applies to FCEB agencies, CISA strongly urges all organizations to reduce their exposure to cyberattacks by prioritizing timely remediation of Catalog vulnerabilities as part of their vulnerability management practice. CISA will continue to add vulnerabilities to the catalog that meet the specified criteria.

Progress Software released a security bulletin to address a vulnerability in MOVEit Transfer. A cyber threat actor could exploit this vulnerability to take control of an affected system.

Users and administrators are encouraged to review the following bulletin and apply the necessary updates:

• MOVEit Transfer Critical Security Alert Bulletin – June 2024 – (CVE-2024-5806)

CISA has added three new vulnerabilities to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog, based on evidence of active exploitation.

• CVE-2022-24816 GeoSolutionsGroup JAI-EXT Code Injection Vulnerability
• CVE-2022-2586 Linux Kernel Use-After-Free Vulnerability
• CVE-2020-13965 Roundcube Webmail Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) Vulnerability

These types of vulnerabilities are frequent attack vectors for malicious cyber actors and pose significant risks to the federal enterprise.

Binding Operational Directive (BOD) 22-01: Reducing the Significant Risk of Known Exploited Vulnerabilities established the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog as a living list of known Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) that carry significant risk to the federal enterprise. BOD 22-01 requires Federal Civilian Executive Branch (FCEB) agencies to remediate identified vulnerabilities by the due date to protect FCEB networks against active threats. See the BOD 22-01 Fact Sheet for more information.

Although BOD 22-01 only applies to FCEB agencies, CISA strongly urges all organizations to reduce their exposure to cyberattacks by prioritizing timely remediation of Catalog vulnerabilities as part of their vulnerability management practice. CISA will continue to add vulnerabilities to the catalog that meet the specified criteria.

CISA has added three new vulnerabilities to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog, based on evidence of active exploitation.

• CVE-2024-32896 Android Pixel Privilege Escalation Vulnerability
• CVE-2024-26169 Microsoft Windows Error Reporting Service Improper Privilege Management Vulnerability
• CVE-2024-4358 Progress Telerik Report Server Authentication Bypass by Spoofing Vulnerability

These types of vulnerabilities are frequent attack vectors for malicious cyber actors and pose significant risks to the federal enterprise.

Binding Operational Directive (BOD) 22-01: Reducing the Significant Risk of Known Exploited Vulnerabilities established the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog as a living list of known Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) that carry significant risk to the federal enterprise. BOD 22-01 requires Federal Civilian Executive Branch (FCEB) agencies to remediate identified vulnerabilities by the due date to protect FCEB networks against active threats. See the BOD 22-01 Fact Sheet for more information.

Although BOD 22-01 only applies to FCEB agencies, CISA strongly urges all organizations to reduce their exposure to cyberattacks by prioritizing timely remediation of Catalog vulnerabilities as part of their vulnerability management practice. CISA will continue to add vulnerabilities to the catalog that meet the specified criteria.

Impersonation scams are on the rise and often use the names and titles of government employees. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is aware of recent impersonation scammers claiming to represent the agency. As a reminder, CISA staff will never contact you with a request to wire money, cash, cryptocurrency, or use gift cards and will never instruct you to keep the discussion secret.

If you suspect you are a target of an impersonation scammer claiming to be a CISA employee:
•    Do not pay the caller.
•    Take note of the phone number calling you.
•    Hang up immediately.
•    Validate the contact by calling CISA at (844) SAY-CISA (844-729-2472) or report it to law enforcement.

CISA has added one new vulnerability to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog, based on evidence of active exploitation.

• CVE-2017-3506 Oracle WebLogic Server OS Command Injection Vulnerability

These types of vulnerabilities are frequent attack vectors for malicious cyber actors and pose significant risks to the federal enterprise.

Binding Operational Directive (BOD) 22-01: Reducing the Significant Risk of Known Exploited Vulnerabilities established the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog as a living list of known Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) that carry significant risk to the federal enterprise. BOD 22-01 requires Federal Civilian Executive Branch (FCEB) agencies to remediate identified vulnerabilities by the due date to protect FCEB networks against active threats. See the BOD 22-01 Fact Sheet for more information.

Although BOD 22-01 only applies to FCEB agencies, CISA strongly urges all organizations to reduce their exposure to cyberattacks by prioritizing timely remediation of Catalog vulnerabilities as part of their vulnerability management practice. CISA will continue to add vulnerabilities to the catalog that meet the specified criteria.

CISA has added two new vulnerabilities to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog, based on evidence of active exploitation.

• CVE-2024-30051 Microsoft DWM Core Library Privilege Escalation Vulnerability
• CVE-2024-30040 Microsoft Windows MSHTML Platform Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability

These types of vulnerabilities are frequent attack vectors for malicious cyber actors and pose significant risks to the federal enterprise.

Binding Operational Directive (BOD) 22-01: Reducing the Significant Risk of Known Exploited Vulnerabilities established the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog as a living list of known Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) that carry significant risk to the federal enterprise. BOD 22-01 requires Federal Civilian Executive Branch (FCEB) agencies to remediate identified vulnerabilities by the due date to protect FCEB networks against active threats. See the BOD 22-01 Fact Sheet for more information.

Although BOD 22-01 only applies to FCEB agencies, CISA strongly urges all organizations to reduce their exposure to cyberattacks by prioritizing timely remediation of Catalog vulnerabilities as part of their vulnerability management practice. CISA will continue to add vulnerabilities to the catalog that meet the specified criteria.

Content: Microsoft has released security updates to address vulnerabilities in multiple products. A cyber threat actor could exploit some of these vulnerabilities to take control of an affected system.

Users and administrators are encouraged to review the following advisory and apply the necessary updates:

• Microsoft Security Update Guide for May

Today, CISA, in partnership with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC) released joint Cybersecurity Advisory (CSA) #StopRansomware: Black Basta to provide cybersecurity defenders tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) and indicators of compromise (IOCs) used by known Black Basta ransomware affiliates and identified through FBI investigations and third-party reporting.

Black Basta is a ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) variant, first identified in April 2022. Black Basta affiliates have targeted over 500 private industry and critical infrastructure entities, including healthcare organizations, in North America, Europe, and Australia.

CISA and partners encourage organizations to review and implement the mitigations provided in the joint CSA to reduce the likelihood and impact of Black Basta and other ransomware incidents. For more information, see StopRansomware.gov and the #StopRansomware Guide.

Today, CISA, in collaboration with U.S. and international partners, published a joint fact sheet, Defending OT Operations Against Ongoing Pro-Russia Hacktivist Activity. This fact sheet provides information and mitigations associated with cyber operations conducted by pro-Russia hacktivists who seek to compromise industrial control systems (ICS) and small-scale operational technology (OT) systems in North American and European critical infrastructure sectors, including Water and Wastewater Systems, Dams, Energy, and Food and Agriculture Sectors.

The pro-Russia hacktivist activity appears mostly limited to unsophisticated techniques that manipulate ICS equipment to create nuisance effects. However, investigations have identified that these actors are capable of techniques that pose physical threats against insecure and misconfigured OT environments.

CISA and partners encourage OT operators in critical infrastructure sectors to apply the recommendations listed in the fact sheet to defend against this activity. To learn more about secure by design principles and practices, visit CISA’s Secure by Design webpage. For more information and guidance on protection against the most common and impactful threats, tactics, techniques, and procedures, visit CISA’s Cross-Sector Cybersecurity Performance Goals.