Author: blogmirnet

CISA and the National Security Agency (NSA) published Identity and Access Management: Developer and Vendor Challenges, authored by the Enduring Security Framework (ESF), a CISA- and NSA-led working panel that includes a public-private cross-sector partnership. ESF aims to address risks that threaten critical infrastructure and national security systems.

This publication, which follows ESF’s Identity and Access Management Recommended Best Practices Guide for Administrators, assesses and addresses challenges developers and technology manufacturers face in identity and access management (IAM). The guidance specifically addresses technology gaps that limit the adoption and secure employment of multifactor authentication (MFA) and single sign-on (SSO) technologies within organizations.

Although the publication primarily addresses challenges facing large organizations, it also provides recommendations applicable to smaller organizations. CISA encourages cybersecurity defenders to review this guidance and to speak to their software vendors about implementing its recommendations.

Today, the National Security Agency (NSA) and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) released a joint cybersecurity advisory (CSA), NSA and CISA Red and Blue Teams Share Top Ten Cybersecurity Misconfigurations, which provides the most common cybersecurity misconfigurations in large organizations, and details the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) actors use to exploit these misconfigurations.

The misconfigurations in the CSA illustrate a trend of systemic weaknesses in many large organizations, including those with mature cyber postures, and highlights the importance of software manufacturers embracing secure-by-design principles to reduce the burden on network defenders. Read the Executive Assistant Director at CISA’s blog post on the “Urgency for Software Manufacturers to Incorporate Secure by Design Principles.”

Additionally, NSA and CISA encourage organizations to review the joint CSA for recommended steps and best practices to reduce the risk of malicious actors exploiting the identified misconfigurations. For more information on secure-by-design principles, visit Secure by Design and Security-by-Design and -Default.

Today, CISA, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the National Security Agency, and the U.S. Department of the Treasury released guidance on improving the security of open source software (OSS) in operational technology (OT) and industrial control systems (ICS). In alignment with CISA’s recently released Open Source Security Roadmap, the guidance provides recommendations to OT/ICS organizations on:

• Supporting OSS development and maintenance,
• Managing and patching vulnerabilities in OT/ICS environments, and
• Using the Cross-Sector Cybersecurity Performance Goals (CPGs) as a common framework for adopting key cybersecurity best practices in relation to OSS.

Alongside the guidance, CISA published the Securing OSS in OT web page, which details the Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative (JCDC) OSS planning initiative, a priority within the JCDC 2023 Planning Agenda. The initiative will support collaboration between the public and private sectors—including the OSS community—to better understand and secure OSS use in OT/ICS, which will strengthen defense against OT/ICS cyber threats.    CISA encourages OT/ICS organizations to review this guidance and implement its recommendations.

This FBI Private Industry Notification (PIN) is provided to assist agencies and organizations in guarding against the persistent malicious actions of cybercriminals.

The FBI is releasing this PIN to highlight emerging ransomware trends and encourage organizations to implement the recommendations in the mitigations section to reduce the likelihood and impact of ransomware incidents.

As of July 2023, the FBI noted two trends emerging across the ransomware environment and is releasing this notification for industry awareness. These new trends included multiple ransomware attacks on the same victim in close date proximity and new data destruction tactics in ransomware attacks.

This FBI PIN provides an overview of the threat, mitigation recommendations, and is being provided to assist agencies and organizations in guarding against the persistent malicious actions of cybercriminals.

NIST has published Special Publication (SP) 800-82r3 (Revision 3), Guide to Operational Technology (OT) Security, which provides guidance on how to improve the security of OT systems while addressing their unique performance, reliability, and safety requirements.

OT encompasses a broad range of programmable systems and devices that interact with the physical environment (or manage devices that interact with the physical environment). These systems and devices detect or cause a direct change through the monitoring and/or control of devices, processes, and events. Examples include industrial control systems (ICS), building automation systems, transportation systems, physical access control systems, physical environment monitoring systems, and physical environment measurement systems.

SP 800-82r3 provides an overview of OT and typical system topologies, identifies typical threats to organizational mission and business functions supported by OT, describes typical vulnerabilities in OT, and provides recommended security safeguards and countermeasures to manage the associated risks.

Updates in this revision also include:

• Expansion in scope from ICS to OT
• Updates to OT threats and vulnerabilities
• Updates to OT risk management, recommended practices, and architectures
• Updates to current activities in OT security
• Updates to security capabilities and tools for OT
• Additional alignment with other OT security standards and guidelines, including the Cybersecurity Framework (CSF)
• New tailoring guidance for SP 800-53r5 security controls, including an OT overlay that provides tailored security control baselines for low-impact, moderate-impact, and high-impact OT systems

In addition to SP 800-82r3, a collection of NIST resources for OT cybersecurity can be found at the Operational Technology Security website.

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Date: October 19th and 20th, 2023
Time: 8:30 a.m. – 5:30 p.m.
Location: Microsoft, 11 Times Sq. NYC (Workshops are virtual)

It will be held in-person at Microsoft in Manhattan on October 19th and 20th, celebrating their 10th anniversary. Featuring a keynote by Lisa Plaggemier, Executive Director of the National Cybersecurity Alliance. For details, click here.

To register for this event, click here.

To learn more about becoming a sponsor for this event, click here.

October is always an exciting time for us as we celebrate Cybersecurity Awareness Month and some of NIST’s greatest accomplishments, resources, guidance, and latest news in the cybersecurity space. This year is a big one because 2023 marks the 20^th anniversary of this important initiative —and we will celebrate in various ways every day throughout the month.

To kick-off our 2023 blog series, we sat down to interview NIST’s David Temoshok—and he walked us through his insights and ideas relative to enabling multi-factor authentication, along with sharing a bit about what he’s up to these days at NIST…

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Progress Software released information regarding multiple vulnerabilities, several critical, in their WS_FTP Server software. These flaws were discovered in the WS_FTP Server Ad hoc Transfer Module and the WS_FTP Server manager interface.

The most critical of the vulnerabilities is CVE-2023-40044, which has the highest severity rating of 10/10, and affects WS_FTP Server versions prior to 8.7.4 and 8.8.2. If exploited, a pre-authenticated threat actor could leverage a .NET deserialization vulnerability in the Ad Hoc Transfer module to execute remote commands on the underlying WS_FTP Server operating system. Proof-of-concept exploit code for CVE-2023-40044 is publicly available.

Additionally, CVE-2023-42657, which has a severity rating of 9.9/10, is a directory traversal vulnerability affecting WS_FTP Server versions prior to 8.7.4 and 8.8.2. An attacker could leverage this vulnerability to perform file operations on files and folders outside of their authorized WS_FTP folder path. Threat actors could also escape the context of the WS_FTP Server file structure and perform the same level of operations on file and folder locations on the underlying operating system.

According to Rapid7, attempts to exploit the disclosed WS_FTP vulnerabilities were observed in multiple customer environments. They provide indicators of compromise, process execution chains, and other technical details in their blog post. A full write-up of CVE-2023-40044 was also published by Assetnote.