How-To-Think About Cyber Security? IDK...I Don't Know / How about a Risk Management Approach > MAKING PROBLEMS AND CREATING MONEY

Apparently nothing can stop the never-ending intrusions that are 'discovered' after-the-fact and disclosed to the public sometimes months later after the damages are done to steal the data.

Is help on the way in the lucrative realm of Cyber Warfare?

 MAKING PROBLEMS AND CREATING MONEY

Techdirt Podcast Episode 284:

How To Think About Cybersecurity

Tue, May 25th 2021 1:30pm— Leigh Beadon

Techdirt.

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MIT Technology Review

The Colonial pipeline ransomware hackers had a secret
weapon: self-promoting cybersecurity firms

On January 11, antivirus company Bitdefender said it was “happy to announce” a startling breakthrough. It had found a flaw in the ransomware ...

2 days ago

 

Data centers around the world have a new concern to contend with—a remote code vulnerability in a widely used VMware product.

Vulnerability in VMware product has severity rating of 9.8 out of 10

Remote code execution flaw in vCenter Server poses "serious" risk to data centers.

Dan Goodin - 5/25/2021, 2:42 PM

The security flaw, which VMware disclosed and patched on Tuesday, resides in the vCenter Server, a tool used for managing virtualization in large data centers. vCenter Server is used to administer VMware’s vSphere and ESXi host products, which by some rankings are the first and second most popular virtualization solutions on the market. Enlyft, a site that provides business intelligence, shows that more than 43,000 organizations use vSphere.

“Serious”

A VMware advisory said that vCenter machines using default configurations have a bug that, in many networks, allows for the execution of malicious code when the machines are reachable on a port that is exposed to the Internet. The vulnerability is tracked as CVE-2021-21985 and has a severity score of 9.8 out of 10.

. . .Shodan, a service that catalogs sites available on the Internet, shows that there are almost 5,600 public-facing vCenter machines. Most or all of those reside in large data centers potentially hosting terabytes of sensitive data. Shodan shows that the top users with vCenter servers exposed on the Internet are Amazon, Hetzner Online GmbH, OVH SAS, and Google.

Further Reading

Code-execution flaw in VMware has a severity rating of 9.8 out of 10

CVE-2021-21985 is the second vCenter vulnerability this year to carry a 9.8 rating. Within a day of VMware patching the vulnerability in February, proof-of-concept exploits appeared from at least six different sources. The disclosure set off a frantic round of mass Internet scans as attackers and defenders alike searched for vulnerable servers.

vCenter versions 6.5, 6.7, and 7.0 are all affected. Organizations with vulnerable machines should prioritize this patch. Those who can’t install immediately should follow Beaumont’s workaround advice. VMware has more workaround guidance here.

VMware credited Ricter Z of 360 Noah Lab for reporting this issue.

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More from Leigh Beadon (Techdirt)

"The recent ransomware attack on the Colonial Pipeline has brought renewed public attention to cybersecurity issues. The field is always evolving, and the attack serves as a great starting point for understanding the current state of cybersecurity, so this week we're joined by three experts — Ross Nordurft and Alex Botting from Venable LLP, and Amy Mahn from the National Institute of Standards and Technology — to discuss the lessons from the pipeline attack, and how to take a risk management approach to cybersecurity.

Follow the Techdirt Podcast on Soundcloud, subscribe via Apple Podcasts, or grab the RSS feed. You can also keep up with all the latest episodes right here on Techdirt.

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Filed Under: cybersecurity, nist, podcast

 

 

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