Tag: cybersecurity

United States and Spain Announce the Development of a New Capacity Building Tool to Combat Ransomware

Agency News, Cyber Security CII sector, Industry News

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), in partnership with the U.S. Department of State and the Spanish Ministry of the Interior, announced a joint project to develop a capacity-building tool to help countries utilize public-private partnerships (PPPs) to combat ransomware. This project was developed as part of the Second International Counter Ransomware Initiative (CRI) Summit, which was convened in Washington, D.C. The CRI is a global coalition of 36 partner nations and the European Union dedicated to confronting the scourge of ransomware.

The CRI’s Public-Private Partnership (P3) Working Group, chaired by Spain, has focused on the essential need for close collaboration between governments and the private sector to address the challenges posed by ransomware. This tool will provide much needed guidance to nations around the world seeking to develop or deepen such public-private partnerships.

“Building capacity across the world is an essential aspect of our fight against ransomware,” said Brandon Wales, CISA Executive Director. “By learning from each other—public and private sector alike—and sharing that knowledge more broadly, we can effectively protect the critical infrastructure necessary to sustain not only American society, but the global institutions and networks upon which it relies.”

“Spain has the strong conviction that this project will contribute in a decisive manner to expose the most innovative state of the art of PPP best practices to fight against ransomware, said Guillermo Ardizone Garcίa, Political Director of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “Thereby, all multi-stakeholders and partners involved in the CRI will be benefited from this line of action. Spain will actively encourage state and non-state stakeholders to join in this project poised to broadly share the PPP best practices, including creative financing schemes.”

When completed, the tool will feature a series of case studies of PPPs that have been used in the counter-ransomware fight, including those pioneered by members of the CRI P3 Working Group. The tool will highlight the features that made these efforts successful and will be designed to provide practical guidance to countries looking to implement their own PPPs as part of their national counter-ransomware efforts.

To develop the tool, the United States and Spain are partnering with the Global Forum on Cyber Expertise (GFCE), a global leader in cyber capacity building that will commission experts to deliver the tool. Other CRI members have been invited to provide additional financial and practical support to the project.

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Volatile Geopolitics Shake the Trends of the 2022 Cybersecurity Threat Landscape

Agency News, Cyber Security CII sector, Industry News

With the geopolitical context giving rise to cyberwarfare and hacktivism, alarming cyber operations and malignant cyberattacks have altered the trends of the 10th edition of the Threat Landscape report released by the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA).

The ENISA Threat Landscape 2022 (ETL) report is the annual report of the EU Agency for Cybersecurity on the state of the cybersecurity threat landscape. The 10th edition covers a period of reporting starting from July 2021 up to July 2022.

With more than 10 terabytes of data stolen monthly, ransomware still fares as one of the prime threats in the new report with phishing now identified as the most common initial vector of such attacks. The other threats to rank highest along ransomware are attacks against availability also called Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.

However, the geopolitical situations particularly the Russian invasion of Ukraine have acted as a game changer over the reporting period for the global cyber domain. While we still observe an increase of the number of threats, we also see a wider range of vectors emerge such as zero-day exploits and AI-enabled disinformation and deepfakes. As a result, more malicious and widespread attacks emerge having more damaging impact.

EU Agency for Cybersecurity Executive Director, Juhan Lepassaar stated that “Today's global context is inevitably driving major changes in the cybersecurity threat landscape. The new paradigm is shaped by the growing range of threat actors. We enter a phase which will need appropriate mitigation strategies to protect all our critical sectors, our industry partners and therefore all EU citizens."

Prominent threat actors remain the same

State sponsored, cybercrime, hacker-for-hire actors and hacktivists remain the prominent threat actors during the reporting period of July 2021 to July 2022.

Based on the analysis of the proximity of cyber threats in relation to the European Union (EU), the number of incidents remains high over the reporting period in the NEAR category. This category includes affected networks, systems, controlled and assured within EU borders. It also covers the affected population within the borders of the EU.

Threat analysis across sectors

Added last year, the threat distribution across sectors is an important aspect of the report as it gives context to the threats identified. This analysis shows that no sector is spared. It also reveals nearly 50% of threats target the following categories; public administration and governments (24%), digital service providers (13%) and the general public (12%) while the other half is shared by all other sectors of the economy.

Top threats still standing their grounds

ENISA sorted threats into 8 groups. Frequency and impact determine how prominent all of these threats still are.

Ransomware:
- 60% of affected organisations may have paid ransom demands
Malware:
- 66 disclosures of zero-day vulnerabilities observed in 2021
Social engineering:
- Phishing remains a popular technique but we see new forms of phishing arising such as spear-phishing, whaling, smishing and vishing
Threats against data:
- Increasing in proportionally to the total of data produced
Threats against availability:
- Largest Denial of Service (DDoS) attack ever was launched in Europe in July 2022;
- Internet: destruction of infrastructure, outages and rerouting of internet traffic.
Disinformation – misinformation:
- Escalating AI-enabled disinformation, deepfakes and disinformation-as-a-service
Supply chain targeting:
- Third-party incidents account for 17% of the intrusions in 2021 compared to less than 1% in 2020

Contextual trends emerging

- Zero-day exploits are the new resource used by cunning threat actors to achieve their goals;
- A new wave of hacktivism has been observed since the Russia-Ukraine war.
- DDoS attacks are getting larger and more complex moving towards mobile networks and Internet of Things (IoT) which are now being used in cyberwarfare.
- AI-enabled disinformation and deepfakes. The proliferation of bots modelling personas can easily disrupt the “notice-and-comment” rulemaking process, as well as the community interaction, by flooding government agencies with fake contents and comments.

Shifting motivation and digital impact are driving new trends

An impact assessment of threats reveals 5 types of impact; damages of reputational, digital, economical, physical or social nature. Although for most incidents the impact really remains unknown because victims fail to disclose information or the information remains incomplete.

Prime threats were analysed in terms of motivation. The study reveals that ransomware is purely motivated by financial gains. However, motivation for state sponsored groups can be drawn from geopolitics with threats such as espionage and disruptions. Ideology may also be the motor behind cyber operations by hacktivists.

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NCSC CEO delivers international speech on securing the Internet of Things and smart cities

Agency News, Cyber Security CII sector, Industry News

The head of the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre, Lindy Cameron, has emphasised the importance of connected technologies being made secure by design in a speech at Singapore International Cyber Week.

Lindy Cameron said the growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) has brought benefits for consumers, enterprises and at a city level in connected places, but she highlighted that the associated risks must be managed now to stay ahead of cyber threats.

She outlined how the UK has developed a strong framework for managing the future security of the Internet of Things, including through new legislation, the adoption of international cyber security standards and developing ‘secure by design’ principles to help influence IoT at the design phase.

She called for swift, decisive and ongoing action to ensure connected devices are designed, built, deployed and managed with security as a first-class concern, to prevent malicious actors, improve national resilience and reap benefits of these emerging technologies

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ESF Partners, NSA, and CISA Release Software Supply Chain Guidance for Suppliers

Agency News, Cyber Security CII sector, Industry News

The National Security Agency (NSA), the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released Securing the Software Supply Chain: Recommended Practices Guide for Suppliers. The product is through the Enduring Security Framework (ESF) — a public-private cross-sector working group led by NSA and CISA that provides cybersecurity guidance to address high priority threats to the nation’s critical infrastructure.

In an effort to provide guidance to suppliers, ESF examined the events that led up to the SolarWinds attack, which made clear that investment was needed to create a set of industry and government evaluated best practices focusing on the needs of the software supplier.

Cyberattacks target an enterprise’s use of cyberspace to disrupt, disable, destroy, or maliciously control a computing environment or infrastructure, destroy the integrity of data, or steal controlled information. A malicious actor can take advantage of a single vulnerability in the software supply chain and have a severe negative impact on computing environments or infrastructure.

Prevention is often seen as the responsibility of the software developer, as they are required to securely develop and deliver code, verify third party components, and harden the build environment. But the supplier also holds a critical responsibility in ensuring the security and integrity of our software. After all, the software vendor is responsible for liaising between the customer and software developer. It is through this relationship that additional security features can be applied via contractual agreements, software releases and updates, notifications and mitigations of vulnerabilities.

Software suppliers will find guidance from NSA and our partners on preparing organizations by defining software security checks, protecting software, producing well-secured software, and responding to vulnerabilities on a continuous basis. Until all stakeholders seek to mitigate concerns specific to their area of responsibility, the software supply chain cycle will be vulnerable and at risk for potential compromise.

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NSA Releases Guidance on How to Protect Against Software Memory Safety Issues

Agency News, Cyber Security CII sector, Industry News

The National Security Agency (NSA) has published guidance to help software developers and operators prevent and mitigate software memory safety issues, which account for a large portion of exploitable vulnerabilities.

The “Software Memory Safety” Cybersecurity Information Sheet highlights how malicious cyber actors can exploit poor memory management issues to access sensitive information, promulgate unauthorized code execution, and cause other negative impacts.

“Memory management issues have been exploited for decades and are still entirely too common today,” said Neal Ziring, Cybersecurity Technical Director. “We have to consistently use memory safe languages and other protections when developing software to eliminate these weaknesses from malicious cyber actors.”

Microsoft and Google have each stated that software memory safety issues are behind around 70 percent of their vulnerabilities. Poor memory management can lead to technical issues as well, such as incorrect program results, degradation of the program’s performance over time, and program crashes.

NSA recommends that organizations use memory safe languages when possible and bolster protection through code-hardening defenses such as compiler options, tool options, and operating system configurations.

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DOD Cybersecurity: Enhanced Attention Needed to Ensure Cyber Incidents Are Appropriately Reported and Shared

Agency News, Cyber Security CII sector, Industry News

DOD and DIB information technology systems continue to be susceptible to cyber incidents as cybersecurity threats have evolved and become more sophisticated. Federal laws and DOD guidance emphasize the importance of properly reporting and sharing cyber incident information, as both are vital to identifying system weaknesses and improving the security of the systems.

House Report 116-442 included a provision for GAO to review DOD's cyber incident management. This report examines the extent to which DOD established and implemented a process to (1) report and notify leadership of cyber incidents, (2) report and share information about cyber incidents affecting the DIB, and (3) notify affected individuals of a PII breach.

To conduct this work, GAO reviewed relevant guidance, analyzed samples of cyber incident artifacts and cyber incident reports submitted by the DIB and privacy data breaches reported by DOD, and surveyed 24 DOD cyber security service providers. In addition, GAO interviewed officials from DOD and cyber security service providers and convened two discussion groups with DIB companies.

Cyber attacks threaten national security—but hackers continue to target DOD as well as private companies and others involved in the nation's military operations.

DOD has taken steps to combat these attacks and has reduced the number of cyber incidents in recent years. But we found that DOD:
- Hasn't fully implemented its processes for managing cyber incidents
- Doesn't have complete data on cyber incidents that staff report
- Doesn't document whether it notifies individuals whose personal data is compromised in a cyber incident

What GAO Found

The Department of Defense (DOD) and our nation's defense industrial base (DIB)—which includes entities outside the federal government that provide goods or services critical to meeting U.S. military requirements—are dependent on information systems to carry out their operations. These systems continue to be the target of cyber attacks, as DOD has experienced over 12,000 cyber incidents since 2015 (see figure).To combat these incidents, DOD has established two processes for managing cyber incidents—one for all incidents and one for critical incidents. However, DOD has not fully implemented either of these processes.

Despite the reduction in the number of incidents due to DOD efforts, weaknesses in reporting these incidents remain. For example, DOD's system for reporting all incidents often contained incomplete information and DOD could not always demonstrate that they had notified appropriate leadership of relevant critical incidents. The weaknesses in the implementation of the two processes are due to DOD not assigning an organization responsible for ensuring proper incident reporting and compliance with guidance, among other reasons. Until DOD assigns such responsibility, DOD does not have assurance that its leadership has an accurate picture of the department's cybersecurity posture.

In addition, DOD has not yet decided whether DIB cyber incidents detected by cybersecurity service providers should be shared with all relevant stakeholders, according to officials. DOD guidance states that to protect the interests of national security, cyber incidents must be coordinated among and across DOD organizations and outside sources, such as DIB partners. Until DOD examines whether this information should be shared with all relevant parties, there could be lost opportunities to identify system threats and improve system weaknesses.

DOD has established a process for determining whether to notify individuals of a breach of their personally identifiable information (PII). This process includes conducting a risk assessment that considers three factors—the nature and sensitivity of the PII, likelihood of access to and use of the PII, and the type of the breach. However, DOD has not consistently documented the notifications of affected individuals, because officials said notifications are often made verbally or by email and no record is retained. Without documenting the notification, DOD cannot verify that people were informed about the breach.

GAO is making six recommendations, including that DOD assign responsibility for ensuring proper incident reporting, improve the sharing of DIB-related cyber incident information, and document when affected individuals are notified of a PII breach. DOD concurred with the recommendations.

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CISA Developed Cross-Sector Recommendations to Help Organizations Prioritize Cybersecurity Investments

Agency News, Cyber Security CII sector, Industry News, Power/Energy/Oil & Gas sector

The Department of Homeland Security released the Cybersecurity Performance Goals (CPGs), voluntary practices that outline the highest-priority baseline measures businesses and critical infrastructure owners of all sizes can take to protect themselves against cyber threats. The CPGs were developed by DHS, through the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), at the direction of the White House. Over the past year, CISA worked with hundreds of public and private sector partners and analyzed years of data to identify the key challenges that leave our nation at unacceptable risk. By clearly outlining measurable goals based on easily understandable criteria such as cost, complexity, and impact, the CPGs were designed to be applicable to organizations of all sizes. This effort is part of the Biden-Harris Administration’s ongoing work to ensure the security of the critical infrastructure and reduce our escalating national cyber risk.

“Organizations across the country increasingly understand that cybersecurity risk is not only a fundamental business challenge but also presents a threat to our national security and economic prosperity,” said Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro N. Mayorkas. “The new Cybersecurity Performance Goals will help organizations decide how to leverage their cybersecurity investments with confidence that the measures they take will make a material impact on protecting their business and safeguarding our country.”

CISA developed the CPGs in close partnership with the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST). The resulting CPGs are intended to be implemented in concert with the NIST Cybersecurity Framework. Every organization should use the NIST Cybersecurity Framework to develop a rigorous, comprehensive cybersecurity program. The CPGs prescribe an abridged subset of actions – a kind of “QuickStart guide” – for the NIST CSF to help organizations prioritize their security investments.

“To reduce risk to the infrastructure and supply chains that Americans rely on every day, we must have a set of baseline cybersecurity goals that are consistent across all critical infrastructure sectors,” said CISA Director Jen Easterly. “CISA has created such a set of cybersecurity performance goals to address medium-to-high impact cybersecurity risks to our critical infrastructure. For months, we’ve been gathering input from our partners across the public and private sectors to put together a set of concrete actions that critical infrastructure owners can take to drive down risk to their systems, networks and data. We look forward to seeing these goals implemented over the coming years and to receiving additional feedback on how we can improve future versions to most effectively reduce cybersecurity risk to our country.”

“The Biden-Harris Administration has relentlessly focused on securing our Nation’s critical infrastructure since day one,” said Deputy National Security Advisor for Cyber and Emerging Technologies Anne Neuberger. “CISA has demonstrated tremendous leadership in strengthening our critical infrastructure’s cyber resilience over the last year. The Cyber Performance Goals build on these efforts, by setting a higher cybersecurity standard for sectors to meet.”

“Given the myriad serious cybersecurity risks our nation faces, NIST looks forward to continuing to work with industry and government organizations to help them achieve these performance goals,” said Under Secretary of Commerce for Standards and Technology and NIST Director Laurie E. Locascio. “Our priority remains bringing together the right stakeholders to further develop standards, guidelines and practices to help manage and reduce cybersecurity risk.”

In the months ahead, CISA will actively seek feedback on the CPGs from partners across the critical infrastructure community and has established a Discussions webpage to receive this input. CISA will also begin working directly with individual critical infrastructure sectors as it builds out sector-specific CPGs in the coming months.

To access these new CPGs visit CISA.gov/cpgs.

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TSA issues new cybersecurity requirements for passenger and freight railroad carriers

Agency News, Industry News, Transport sector

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) announced a new cybersecurity security directive regulating designated passenger and freight railroad carriers. Today’s announcement demonstrates the Biden-Harris Administration’s commitment to strengthen the cybersecurity of U.S. critical infrastructure. Building on the TSA’s work to strengthen defenses in other transportation modes, this security directive will further enhance cybersecurity preparedness and resilience for the nation’s railroad operations.

Developed with extensive input from industry stakeholders and federal partners, including the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Department of Transportation’s Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), this Enhancing Rail Cybersecurity – SD 1580/82-2022-01 strengthens cybersecurity requirements and focuses on performance-based measures to achieve critical cybersecurity outcomes.

“The nation’s railroads have a long track record of forward-looking efforts to secure their network against cyber threats and have worked hard over the past year to build additional resilience, and this directive, which is focused on performance-based measures, will further these efforts to protect critical transportation infrastructure from attack,” said TSA Administrator David Pekoske. “We are encouraged by the significant collaboration between TSA, FRA, CISA and the railroad industry in the development of this security directive.

The security directive requires that TSA-specified passenger and freight railroad carriers take action to prevent disruption and degradation to their infrastructure to achieve the following critical security outcomes:

1. Develop network segmentation policies and controls to ensure that the Operational Technology system can continue to safely operate in the event that an Information Technology system has been compromised and vice versa;
2. Create access control measures to secure and prevent unauthorized access to critical cyber systems;
3. Build continuous monitoring and detection policies and procedures to detect cybersecurity threats and correct anomalies that affect critical cyber system operations; and
4. Reduce the risk of exploitation of unpatched systems through the application of security patches and updates for operating systems, applications, drivers, and firmware on critical cyber systems in a timely manner using a risk-based methodology.

Passenger and freight railroad carriers are required to:

1. Establish and execute a TSA-approved Cybersecurity Implementation Plan that describes the specific cybersecurity measures the passenger and freight rail carriers are utilizing to achieve the security outcomes set forth in the security directive.
2. Establish a Cybersecurity Assessment Program to proactively test and regularly audit the effectiveness of cybersecurity measures and identify and resolve vulnerabilities within devices, networks, and systems.

This is the latest in TSA’s performance-based security directives; previous security directives include requirements such as reporting significant cybersecurity incidents to CISA, establishing a cybersecurity point of contact, developing and adopting a cybersecurity incident response plan, and completing a cybersecurity vulnerability assessment. Through this security directive, TSA continues to take steps to protect transportation infrastructure in the current threat environment. TSA also intends to begin a rulemaking process, which would establish regulatory requirements for the rail sector following a public comment period.

To view TSA’s security directives and guidance documents, please visit the TSA cybersecurity toolkit.

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Public Health Emergencies: Data Management Challenges Impact National Response

Agency News, Cyber Security CII sector, Health & Social Care, Industry News

Public health emergencies evolve quickly, but public health entities lack the ability to share new data and potentially life-saving information in real-time—undermining the nation's ability to respond quickly.

To address this, the federal government must overcome three major challenges—specifically, the lack of:

- Common standards for collecting data (e.g., patient characteristics)
- "Interoperability" (meaning not all data systems work together)
- Public health IT infrastructure (the hardware, software, networks, and policies that would enable the reporting and sharing of data)

This snapshot discusses our related work and recommendations.

Public health emergencies evolve quickly, but public health entities lack the ability to share new data and potentially life-saving information in near real-time. To address this, the federal government must overcome 3 major challenges in how it manages public health data. GAO has made a number of recommendations to help address these challenges. However, many of these recommendations have not been implemented.
The Big Picture

Longstanding challenges in the federal government’s management of public health data undermine the nation’s ability to quickly respond to public health emergencies like COVID-19 and monkeypox. These challenges include the lack of:

- common data standards—requirements for public health entitles to collect certain data elements, such as patient characteristics (e.g., name, sex, and race) and clinical information (e.g., diagnosis and test results) in a specific way;
- interoperability—the ability of data collection systems to exchange information with and process information from other systems; and
- public health IT infrastructure—the computer software, hardware, networks, and policies that enable public health entities to report and retrieve data and information.

Over 15 years ago, federal law mandated that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) establish a national public health situational awareness network with a standardized data format. This network was intended to provide secure, near real-time information to facilitate early detection of and rapid response to infectious diseases.

However, the federal government still lacks this needed network and has not yet overcome the challenges identified in previous GAO reviews. Having near real-time access to these data could significantly improve our nation’s preparedness for public health emergencies and potentially save lives.

Without the network, federal, state, and local health departments, hospitals, and laboratories are left without the ability to easily share health information in real-time to respond effectively to diseases.

GAO’s prior work identified three broad challenges to public health data management and recommended actions for improvement.

1. Common Data Standards

To ensure that information can be consistently reported, compared, and analyzed across jurisdictions, public health entities need a standardized data format. Due to the lack of common data standards, information reported by states about COVID-19 case counts was inconsistent. This in turn complicated the ability of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to make comparisons. Public health representatives also noted challenges in collecting complete demographic data. This made it difficult to identify trends in COVID-19 vaccinations and the number of doses administered. Although CDC had intended to implement data standards, its strategic plan did not articulate specific actions, roles, responsibilities, and time frames for doing so.

- Re recommended that HHS establish an expert committee for data collection and reporting standards by engaging with stakeholders (e.g., health care professionals from public and private sectors). This committee should review and inform the alignment of ongoing data collection and reporting standards related to key health indicators.
- Recommended that CDC define specific action steps and time frames for its data modernization efforts.

2. Interoperability among Public Health IT Systems

The inability to easily exchange information across data collection and other data systems creates barriers to data sharing and additional burdens on entities that collect and transmit data. During the early stages of COVID-19, the lack of IT system interoperability caused health officials and their key stakeholders (e.g., hospitals) to manually input data into multiple systems. In addition, some state health departments could not directly exchange information with CDC via an IT system. This led to longer time frames for CDC to receive the data they needed to make decisions on the COVID-19 response.

- Recommended that, as part of planning for the public health situational awareness network, HHS should ensure the plan includes how standards for interoperability will be used.

3. Lack of a Public Health IT Infrastructure

The timeliness and completeness of information that is shared during public health emergencies can be impeded by the absence of a public health IT infrastructure. During the early stages of COVID-19, some states had to manually collect, process, and transfer data from one place to another. For example, a state official described having to fax documents, make copies, and physically transport relevant documents. The official noted by establishing a public health IT infrastructure, such as the network HHS was mandated to create, errors would be reduced. To help mitigate challenges in data management for COVID-19, HHS launched the HHS Protect platform in April 2020. However, we reported that public health and state organizations raised questions about the completeness and accuracy of some of the data.

- Recommended that HHS prioritize the development of the network by, in part, establishing specific near-term and long-term actions that can be completed to show progress.
- Recommended that HHS identify an office to oversee the development of the network.
- Recommended that HHS identify and document information-sharing challenges and lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic.

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UK and allies expose Iranian state agency for exploiting cyber vulnerabilities for ransomware operations

Agency News, Cyber Security CII sector, Industry News

The UK and international allies have issued a joint cyber security advisory highlighting that cyber actors affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) are exploiting vulnerabilities to launch ransomware operations against multiple sectors.

Iranian-state APT actors have been observed actively targeting known vulnerabilities on unprotected networks, including in critical national infrastructure (CNI) organisations.

The advisory, published by the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) − a part of GCHQ − alongside agencies from the US, Australia and Canada, sets out tactics and techniques used by the actors, as well as steps for organisations to take to mitigate the risk of compromise.

It updates an advisory issued in November 2021 which provided information about Iranian APT actors exploiting known Fortinet and Microsoft Exchange vulnerabilities.

They are now assessed to be affiliated to the IRGC and are continuing to exploit these vulnerabilities, as well as the Log4j vulnerabilities, to provide them with initial access, leading to further malicious activity including data extortion and disk encryption.

Paul Chichester, NCSC Director of Operations, said:

"This malicious activity by actors affiliated with Iran’s IRGC poses an ongoing threat and we are united with our international partners in calling it out.

“We urge UK organisations to take this threat seriously and follow the advisory’s recommendations to mitigate the risk of compromise.”

The NCSC urges organisations to follow the mitigation set out in the advisory, including:

- Keeping systems and software updated and prioritising remediating known exploited vulnerabilities
- Enforcing multi-factor authentication
- Making offline backups of your data

This advisory has been issued by the NCSC, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the National Security Agency (NSA), US Cyber Command (USCC), Department of the Treasury (DoT), the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) and the Canadian Centre for Cybersecurity (CCCS).

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