Security

DL Cyber Blog FI

22 Dec: Dedicated State and Local Government Cyber Grants Are Coming

State and local governments will be receiving dedicated cyber grants for the first time in 2022, now that the new bipartisan legislation has passed. While previous federal programs offered the potential for grants for cybersecurity projects in state and local governments through the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA), these grants were not previously dedicated (required) to improving cybersecurity.

Log4j Breach Blog

15 Dec: Investigating and Mitigating Log4j/Log4Shell Vulnerability

On Dec. 9, 2021, a remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability in the popular Java-based logging package Log4j was disclosed.  Submitting a specially crafted request to a vulnerable system allows an attacker to download and execute a malicious payload to perform additional functions such as data exfiltration, diverting funds, performing surveillance, or disrupting service.  What many experts fear now is that the bug could be used to encrypt data and due to the discovery of this exploit being so recent, there are still many servers, both on-premises and within cloud environments, that have yet to be patched.  Scanning activity for CVE-2021-44228 has actively begun on the internet with the intent of seeking out and exploiting unpatched systems.  Apache Log4j versions <= 2.15.0 rc1 are vulnerable.