Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

Last week I had the privilege to be in Washington, DC talking to a group of defenders. I heard a clear pattern of words: “data-driven,” “telemetry-first,” and “visibility”.

Ever since the public exploit of the Log4Shell remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability became known on December 10, 2021, security teams have been scrambling to understand the risk to their environments. Part of that scramble has been to ascertain which tools are best positioned to help detect the vulnerability. Which approaches are most effective and where do they fall short?

The CISO’s role is never static. Over the last two decades, it has evolved beyond technical IT security. CISOs are now central to their organization when it comes to risk, compliance and governance. And this comes at a time when businesses are undergoing rapid change in the face of changing threats. In the past, the CISO or head of IT security has been an inward-facing role, ensuring compliance and keeping data secure. But that has changed, with cybersecurity teams more business oriented.

One of the biggest societal trends of 2021 has been the “Great Resignation.” For a variety of reasons—including a robust job market and the ongoing impact of the global pandemic—an average of 3.8 million U.S. workers quit their jobs on a monthly basis so far this year. That’s on pace to be the highest resignation rate on record, and the trend recently expanded to include international locations, such as Germany and Denmark.

Salesforce houses high volumes of customer information, support tickets, quotes and files, synced emails, tasks & notes, and much more. This data can often be accessed by teams across the company who may leverage Salesforce to provide prospects and customers with a great customer experience. However, allowing sensitive data like PII and credit card numbers to live within Salesforce can pose security & compliance risks.

The Elastic Security team identified a noteworthy cluster of malicious activity after reviewing our threat prevention telemetry. A valid code signing certificate is used to sign malware to help the attackers remain under the radar of the security community. We also discovered a novel malware loader used in the campaign, which we’ve named BLISTER. The majority of the malware samples observed have very low, or no, detections in VirusTotal.

To help contain the damages that arise from the log4j vulnerability, Code Intelligence collaborated with Google’s Open Source Security Team. Together, we implemented effective bug detectors for Remote Code Execution Vulnerabilities (RCEs) to Google’s open source fuzzing framework, OSS-Fuzz.

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) is the combination of Security Information Management (SIM) and Security Event Management (SEM) systems. SEM systems store and interpret logs for real-time security event analysis which enables quick defensive action. SIM systems collect data for trend analysis and provide automated reporting. By combining these two technologies together, a SIEM provides rapid identification, analysis, and recovery from security events.

Threat hunters and incident responders are under tremendous time pressure to investigate breaches and incidents. While they are collecting and sorting massive quantities of forensic data, fast response is critical to help limit any damage inflected by the adversary. This article and video will provide an overview of Falcon Forensics, and how it streamlines the collection and analysis of point-in-time and historic forensic data.

The world of cybersecurity has been constantly challenged since the pandemic started. With the dust still settling, a new concern has taken the entire cyber landscape by storm. A flaw in Log4j, a widely used Java-based logging library, allows hackers unbridled access to computer systems. The vulnerability (CVE-2021-44228) affects everything from the cloud to security devices. Attackers have come up with worms that can spread independently from one vulnerable system to another.