As security and development teams rushed to assess the now-notorious Log4Shell vulnerability published December 10 (CVE-2021-44228), another, more minor vulnerability was discovered in Log4j — CVE-2021-45046. To understand the newly-discovered vulnerability, it is important to get the full picture and background on the original Log4j issue.

Dec. 29: Updated to cover three additional CVEs: CVE-2021-4104, CVE-2021-44832, and CVE-2021-42550 (in logback as opposed to log4j). Dec. 22: A joint Cybersecurity Advisory was issued by multiple national cybersecurity agencies providing mitigation guidance on addressing vulnerabilities in Apache’s Log4j software library: CVE-2021-44228 (known as “Log4Shell”), CVE-2021-45046, and CVE-2021-45105. Dec. 17: Please note the emergency directive from CISA on Log4j.

Dec. 29: Updated to cover three additional CVEs: CVE-2021-4104, CVE-2021-44832, and CVE-2021-42550 (in logback as opposed to log4j). Dec. 22: A joint Cybersecurity Advisory was issued by multiple national cybersecurity agencies providing mitigation guidance on addressing vulnerabilities in Apache’s Log4j software library: CVE-2021-44228 (known as “Log4Shell”), CVE-2021-45046, and CVE-2021-45105. Dec. 17: Please note the emergency directive from CISA on Log4j.

New day. New threat. New technology to combat said threat. Sound familiar? The threat landscape is continually evolving and getting more sophisticated, and, in an attempt to keep up, many organizations are quick to adopt the latest buzz-worthy product. This is a recipe for disaster.

While many organizations are patching the two recent Apache Log4j vulnerabilities (CVE-2021-44228 and CVE-2021-45046), attackers have been racing to exploit them to deliver malware, such as botnets, backdoors, and cryptominers. Among the threats delivered using Log4Shell exploits, a new ransomware family was found by Bitdefender: Khonsari.

If you’re in tech at all, you’ve likely heard of the Log4Shell exploit taking over the Intertubes. If you’re not a Java developer (or developer of any sort), you may be left scratching your head as to just what’s going on. This post is split into two parts: an explanation of Log4Shell for non-developers and an overview of the Log4Shell vulnerability for non-Java developers.

A new critical vulnerability has been found in log4j, a widely-used open-source utility used to generate logs inside java applications. The vulnerability CVE-2021-44228, also known as Log4Shell, permits a Remote Code Execution (RCE) allowing the attackers to execute arbitrary code on the host. The log4j utility is popular and used by a huge number of applications and companies, including the famous game Minecraft.

Vulnerability management remains a struggle for many companies and is still only an aspiration for many others. But with digital and cloud transformation rewriting the way many firms do business, the attack surface keeps expanding and becomes more difficult for organizations to protect their environments from growing threats.

The vulnerability, dubbed CVE-2021-43798 impacted the Grafana dashboard, which is used by companies around the world to monitor and aggregate logs and other parameters from across their local or remote networks. The privately reported bug became a leaked zero-day but was first spotted by Detectify Crowdsource hacker Jordy Versmissen on December 2, after which Grafana was notified by Detectify about the bug.

Recent CrowdStrike Intelligence team findings regarding the Log4Shell (CVE-2021-44228, CVE-2021-45046) vulnerabilities indicate wide-ranging impact. CrowdStrike helps protect customers from threats delivered via this vulnerability using both machine learning and indicators of attack (IOAs).