critical infrastructure | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Why does ICS/OT need specific controls and its own cybersecurity budget today? Because treating ICS/OT security with an IT security playbook isn't just ineffective—it's high risk. In the rapidly evolving domain of cybersecurity, the specific challenges and needs for Industrial Control Systems (ICS) and Operational Technology (OT) security distinctly stand out from traditional IT security. ICS/OT engineering systems, which power critical infrastructure such as electric power grids, oil and gas processing, heavy manufacturing, food and beverage processes, and water management facilities, require tailored cybersecurity strategies, and controls. This is due to the increasing attacks towards ICS/OT, their unique operational missions, a different risk surface than that of traditional IT networks, and the significant safety consequences from cyber incidents that impact the physical world. Critical infrastructure should be protected against today's threats to continue supporting national sa...

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Monday said there are no indications that the cyber attack targeting the Treasury Department impacted other federal agencies. The agency said it's working closely with the Treasury Department and BeyondTrust to get a better understanding of the breach and mitigate its impacts. "The security of federal systems and the data they protect is of critical importance to our national security," CISA said . "We are working aggressively to safeguard against any further impacts and will provide updates, as appropriate." The latest statement comes a week after the Treasury Department said it was the victim of a "major cybersecurity incident" that allowed Chinese state-sponsored threat actors to remotely access some computers and unclassified documents. The cyber attack, which came to light in early December 2024, involved a breach of BeyondTrust's systems that allowed the adversary to in...

What do identity risks, data security risks and third-party risks all have in common? They are all made much worse by SaaS sprawl. Every new SaaS account adds a new identity to secure, a new place where sensitive data can end up, and a new source of third party risk. Learn how you can protect this sprawling attack surface in 2025. What do identity risks, data security risks and third-party risks all have in common? They are all made much worse by SaaS sprawl. Every new SaaS account adds a new identity to secure, a new place where sensitive data can end up, and a new source of third-party risk. And, this growing attack surface, much of which is unknown or unmanaged in most orgs, has become an attractive target for attackers. So, why should you prioritize securing your SaaS attack surface in 2025? Here are 4 reasons. ‍ 1. Modern work runs on SaaS. When's the last time you used something other than a cloud-based app to do your work? Can't remember? You're not alone.  Outside of ...

New research has uncovered more than 145,000 internet-exposed Industrial Control Systems (ICS) across 175 countries, with the U.S. alone accounting for over one-third of the total exposures. The analysis , which comes from attack surface management company Censys, found that 38% of the devices are located in North America, 35.4% in Europe, 22.9% in Asia, 1.7% in Oceania, 1.2% in South America, and 0.5% in Africa. The countries with the most ICS service exposures include the U.S. (more than 48,000), Turkey, South Korea, Italy, Canada, Spain, China, Germany, France, the U.K., Japan, Sweden, Taiwan, Poland, and Lithuania. The metrics are derived from the exposure of several commonly-used ICS protocols like Modbus, IEC 60870-5-104, CODESYS, OPC UA, and others. One important aspect that stands out is that the attack surfaces are regionally unique: Modbus, S7, and IEC 60870-5-104 are more widely observed in Europe, while Fox, BACnet, ATG, and C-more are more commonly found in North Ame...

A new China-linked cyber espionage group has been attributed as behind a series of targeted cyber attacks targeting telecommunications entities in South Asia and Africa since at least 2020 with the goal of enabling intelligence collection. Cybersecurity company CrowdStrike is tracking the adversary under the name Liminal Panda , describing it as possessing deep knowledge about telecommunications networks, the protocols that undergird telecommunications, and the various interconnections between providers. The threat actor's malware portfolio includes bespoke tools that facilitate clandestine access, command-and-control (C2), and data exfiltration. "Liminal Panda has used compromised telecom servers to initiate intrusions into further providers in other geographic regions," the company's Counter Adversary Operations team said in a Tuesday analysis. "The adversary conducts elements of their intrusion activity using protocols that support mobile telecommunicati...

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Thursday added a now-patched critical security flaw impacting Palo Alto Networks Expedition to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities ( KEV ) catalog, citing evidence of active exploitation. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-5910 (CVSS score: 9.3), concerns a case of missing authentication in the Expedition migration tool that could lead to an admin account takeover. "Palo Alto Expedition contains a missing authentication vulnerability that allows an attacker with network access to takeover an Expedition admin account and potentially access configuration secrets, credentials, and other data," CISA said in an alert. The shortcoming impacts all versions of Expedition prior to version 1.2.92, which was released in July 2024 to plug the problem. There are currently no reports on how the vulnerability is being weaponized in real-world attacks, but Palo Alto Networks has since revised its original adviso...

U.S. and Israeli cybersecurity agencies have published a new advisory attributing an Iranian cyber group to targeting the 2024 Summer Olympics and compromising a French commercial dynamic display provider to show messages denouncing Israel's participation in the sporting event. The activity has been pinned on an entity that's known as Emennet Pasargad , which the agencies said has been operating under the cover name Aria Sepehr Ayandehsazan (ASA) since mid-2024. It's tracked by the broader cybersecurity community as Cotton Sandstorm, Haywire Kitten, and Marnanbridge. "The group exhibited new tradecraft in its efforts to conduct cyber-enabled information operations into mid-2024 using a myriad of cover personas, including multiple cyber operations that occurred during and targeting the 2024 Summer Olympics – including the compromise of a French commercial dynamic display provider," according to the advisory . ASA, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI),...

Cybersecurity and intelligence agencies from Australia, Canada, and the U.S. have warned about a year-long campaign undertaken by Iranian cyber actors to infiltrate critical infrastructure organizations via brute-force attacks. "Since October 2023, Iranian actors have used brute force and password spraying to compromise user accounts and obtain access to organizations in the healthcare and public health (HPH), government, information technology, engineering, and energy sectors," the agencies said in a joint advisory. The attacks have targeted healthcare, government, information technology, engineering, and energy sectors, per the Australian Federal Police (AFP), the Australian Signals Directorate's Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC), the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSE), the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and the National Security Agency (NSA). Another notable tactic out...

Federal prosecutors in the U.S. have charged two Sudanese brothers with running a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) botnet for hire that conducted a record 35,000 DDoS attacks in a single year, including those that targeted Microsoft's services in June 2023. The attacks, which were facilitated by Anonymous Sudan's "powerful DDoS tool," singled out critical infrastructure, corporate networks, and government agencies in the United States and around the world, the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) said. Ahmed Salah Yousif Omer, 22, and Alaa Salah Yusuuf Omer, 27, have been charged with one count of conspiracy to damage protected computers. Ahmed Salah has also been charged with three counts of damaging protected computers. If convicted on all charges, Ahmed Salah faces a statutory maximum sentence of life in federal prison, while Alaa Salah faces a maximum sentence of five years in federal prison. The DDoS tool is said to have been disabled in March 2024, the same...

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Tuesday added a critical security flaw impacting SolarWinds Web Help Desk (WHD) software to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities ( KEV ) catalog, citing evidence of active exploitation. Tracked as CVE-2024-28987 (CVSS score: 9.1), the vulnerability relates to a case of hard-coded credentials that could be abused to gain unauthorized access and make modifications. "SolarWinds Web Help Desk contains a hardcoded credential vulnerability that could allow a remote, unauthenticated user to access internal functionality and modify data," CISA said in an advisory. Details of the flaw were first disclosed by SolarWinds in late August 2024, with cybersecurity firm Horizon3.ai releasing additional technical specifics a month later. The vulnerability "allows unauthenticated attackers to remotely read and modify all help desk ticket details – often containing sensitive information like passwords from reset req...

Threat actors are actively attempting to exploit a now-patched security flaw in Veeam Backup & Replication to deploy Akira and Fog ransomware. Cybersecurity vendor Sophos said it has been tracking a series of attacks in the past month leveraging compromised VPN credentials and CVE-2024-40711 to create a local account and deploy the ransomware. CVE-2024-40711, rated 9.8 out of 10.0 on the CVSS scale, refers to a critical vulnerability that allows for unauthenticated remote code execution. It was addressed by Veeam in Backup & Replication version 12.2 in early September 2024. Security researcher Florian Hauser of Germany-based CODE WHITE has been credited with discovering and reporting the security shortcoming. "In each of the cases, attackers initially accessed targets using compromised VPN gateways without multifactor authentication enabled," Sophos said . "Some of these VPNs were running unsupported software versions." "Each time, the attacker...

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is warning that it has observed threat actors leveraging unencrypted persistent cookies managed by the F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) module to conduct reconnaissance of target networks. It said the module is being used to enumerate other non-internet-facing devices on the network. The agency, however, did not disclose who is behind the activity, or what the end goals of the campaign are. "A malicious cyber actor could leverage the information gathered from unencrypted persistence cookies to infer or identify additional network resources and potentially exploit vulnerabilities found in other devices present on the network," CISA said in an advisory. It has also recommended organizations encrypt persistent cookies employed in F5 BIG-IP devices by configuring cookie encryption within the HTTP profile. Furthermore, it's urging users to verify the protection of their systems by running a diagnostic...

Details have emerged about multiple security vulnerabilities in two implementations of the Manufacturing Message Specification ( MMS ) protocol that, if successfully exploited, could have severe impacts in industrial environments. "The vulnerabilities could allow an attacker to crash an industrial device or in some cases, enable remote code execution," Claroty researchers Mashav Sapir and Vera Mens said in a new analysis. MMS is an OSI application layer messaging protocol that enables remote control and monitoring of industrial devices by exchanging supervisory control information in an application-agnostic manner. Specifically, it allows for communication between intelligent electronic devices ( IEDs ) and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems or programmable logic controllers (PLCs). The five shortcomings identified by the operational technology security company impact MZ Automation's libIEC61850 library and Triangle MicroWorks' TMW IEC 61...

A little over a dozen new security vulnerabilities have been discovered in residential and enterprise routers manufactured by DrayTek that could be exploited to take over susceptible devices. "These vulnerabilities could enable attackers to take control of a router by injecting malicious code, allowing them to persist on the device and use it as a gateway into enterprise networks," Forescout Vedere Labs said in a technical report shared with The Hacker News. Of the 14 security flaws – collectively called DRAY:BREAK – two are rated critical, nine are rated high, and three are rated medium in severity. The most critical of the shortcomings is a flaw that has been awarded the maximum CVSS score of 10.0. CVE-2024-41592 concerns a buffer overflow bug in the "GetCGI()" function in the Web user interface that could lead to a denial-of-service (DoS) or remote code execution (RCE) when processing the query string parameters. Another critical vulnerability (CVE-2024-41...

Critical security vulnerabilities have been disclosed in six different Automatic Tank Gauge (ATG) systems from five manufacturers that could expose them to remote attacks. "These vulnerabilities pose significant real-world risks, as they could be exploited by malicious actors to cause widespread damage, including physical damage, environmental hazards, and economic losses," Bitsight researcher Pedro Umbelino said in a report published last week. Making matters worse, the analysis found that thousands of ATGs are exposed to the internet, making them a lucrative target for malicious actors looking to stage disruptive and destructive attacks against gas stations, hospitals, airports, military bases, and other critical infrastructure facilities. ATGs are sensor systems designed to monitor the level of a storage tank (e.g., fuel tank) over a period of time with the goal of determining leakage and parameters. Exploitation of security flaws in such systems could therefore have ...