Note: These vulnerabilities remain under active exploitation, and Kroll experts are investigating. If further details are uncovered by our team, updates will be made to the Kroll Cyber Risk blog. Two zero-day vulnerabilities have been discovered in Ivanti Connect Secure (ICS), formerly known as Pulse Connect Secure and Ivanti Policy Secure gateways.
Ivanti released a patch for a critical vulnerability discovered in Ivanti Endpoint Manager (EPM) that could allow for remote code execution (RCE). This vulnerability is being tracked as CVE-2023-39336 with a CVSS score of 9.6 (Critical), which is not yet actively exploited. All versions of Ivanti EPM prior to Service Update 5 are impacted. Ivanti credits security researcher hir0t for the responsible disclosure.
Apache has released an advisory for a critical vulnerability discovered in Struts versions 2.0.0-2.3.37(EOL), 6.0.0-6.3.0.1 and 2.0.0-2.5.32. This vulnerability is being tracked as CVE-2023-50164 with a CVSS score of 9.8 (Critical) and is reportedly being actively exploited. Impacted versions are affected by a file upload and directory traversal vulnerability that can lead to remote code execution.
Kroll forensic examiners and threat intelligence analysts identified a new phishing tactic targeting individuals using QR codes. Victims receive phishing emails impersonating Microsoft, letting them know that additional security measures are required and asking victims to scan the QR code in the body of the email or the email attachment.
Effective threat detection is critical to achieving a mature cybersecurity posture. Yet with so many threat detection options on the market, from managed detection and response (MDR) to managed security service providers (MSSPs) to security information and event management (SIEM), choosing the most effective one for your organization can be challenging.
The threat landscape has evolved rapidly in recent years due to major changes in the way organizations operate and adopt new technologies. Cloud services such as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) have seen massive growth over the last decade. With accelerated digital transformation, increased remote working and cloud adoption, the attack surface has increased for most organizations.
Social engineering in its many forms took center stage in Q3 2023. The quarter saw “human hacking” evolve from a long-standing security challenge to threat actors’ method of choice. This was evidenced by our observations of the dramatic escalation of social engineering tactics, with significant increases in phishing, smishing, valid accounts, voice phishing and other tactics—adding up to the highest volume of incidents we have seen in 2023.
On October 16, 2023, Kroll Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) analysts were made aware of an ongoing exploitation of a recently discovered vulnerability within the web user interface (UI) functionality of Cisco IOS XE (CVE-2023-20198). This security flaw is critical with a CVSS score of 10.
In Q2 and Q3 of this year, Kroll observed an increase in large-scale AiTM phishing and BEC attacks targeting organizations within the professional services, banking and financial industries. In 90% of Kroll's recent BEC investigations, MFA was in place at the time of unauthorized access, but attackers can obtain authentication tokens and/or session cookies to easily evade defenses.
The new rules from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on reporting mark a significant shift in the requirements for disclosing cyber breaches, leaving many businesses wondering how their cybersecurity practices will be impacted in the long run. These new rules create significant new disclosure obligations for public companies, requiring timely and detailed disclosures of material cybersecurity incidents and periodic disclosures about cybersecurity risk management and governance.
