On April 12, 2024, Palo Alto Networks published a security advisory detailing an actively exploited maximum severity zero-day vulnerability affecting the GlobalProtect feature of PAN-OS. Dubbed CVE-2024-3400, it was assigned the maximum critical severity score of 10.0 through the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS), meaning the potential for damage was large and the path to exploit was easy for cybercriminals.

On September 24, 2024, Rackspace, a managed cloud computing company providing cloud hosting, dedicated servers, and multi-cloud solutions, reported an issue with their Rackspace Monitoring product in the ScienceLogic EM7 (ScienceLogic SL1) Portal. Rackspace utilizes the ScienceLogic application as a third-party tool for monitoring certain internal services.

A ransomware attack is underway. The threat actor has gained initial access to an endpoint and executed malicious code on it. As far as the threat actor is concerned, things are going well. However, the next stage is critical to a ransomware attack’s success. Without the ability to spread throughout the entire environment, encrypting or locking up all systems, threat actors are unlikely to be able to extort payment from an organization.

On September 26, 2024, a security researcher disclosed several vulnerabilities affecting Common UNIX Printing System (CUPS) within GNU/Linux distributions. CUPS is an open-source printing system that allows Unix-like operating systems, including Linux and MacOS, to manage printers and print jobs across local and networked environments. The newly identified CUPS vulnerabilities identified are.

One of the more common forms of fileless malware that’s making the rounds across organizations cloud environments, is something called PyLoose. In rotation since 2014, this specific strain of malware targets the cloud workloads and enters environments through an open-source Python code execution application.

On September 24, 2024, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), the parent company of Aruba Networks, released a security bulletin addressing three critical command injection vulnerabilities affecting Aruba Networking Access Points. These vulnerabilities, identified as CVE-2024-42505, CVE-2024-42506, and CVE-2024-42507, could allow remote unauthenticated attackers to execute code with privileged access.

Government entities were in the top five industries targeted by both ransomware and business email compromise (BEC) attacks in 2023, according to Arctic Wolf. Additionally, the FBI reported that government entities were the third most-targeted sector by ransomware in 2023, and Arctic Wolf’s own research saw the average ransom for government organizations top $1 million USD that same year. It’s clear that cyber threats are plentiful for these entities.

On September 17, 2024, Broadcom released fixes for a critical vulnerability impacting VMware vCenter Server and Cloud foundation, tracked as CVE-2024-38812. This vulnerability is a heap-overflow flaw in the implementation of the DCERPC protocol that a remote attacker can use to send specially crafted network packets to vCenter Server, potentially leading to Remote Code Execution (RCE).

In the modern, interconnected world, no organization is immune from a cyber attack. Indeed, most experts agree that it is a matter of “when,” not “if” an organization will be targeted by threat actors. If an attack is successful, the immediate costs — including potential ransom payments, lost revenue, and costs associated with remediation and restoration — can be substantial.

In 2023, nearly 60% of incidents investigated by Arctic Wolf Incident Response involved a vulnerability that was two — or more — years old. That means the organization had 24-plus months to find and remediate the vulnerability before threat actors took advantage. Why do vulnerabilities remain persistent? There’s a number of reasons, not the least of which is that more of them pop up each day, creating a mountain of vulnerabilities that feels too difficult to summit for most businesses.