You think you're good when you bring on the most recent version of a security agent to manage and secure your technology stack, and then BOOM, low and behold, there is a zero day vulnerability present and you have no time to prepare. You are now being breached, data and critical systems are now fully exposed, at risk and potentially compromised.. The business continuity and capacity for your operations are now at stake permanently… But what can you do to prepare? It's a zero day vulnerability, previously unknown…and now you are literally trying to stop-gap the attack. As it turns out, you could have implemented your own additional layers of security, changed the out of the box config and minimized the breach, but you didn't. Instead you left it up to the PRC’s cyber weapons division to show you how important it is to decrease the blast radius and mitigate the attack in a proactive fashion.
Volt-Typhoon is actively deploying and implementing targeted attacks powered up by intense and robust deep learning neural nets to peel apart and reveal zero vulnerabilities right now, world wide.
A zero-day vulnerability is a flaw in software or hardware that is discovered by an attacker. This flaw can be exploited by attackers to gain unauthorized access, execute malicious code, or compromise data.
A recent hacking campaign linked to the Chinese government-backed group "Volt Typhoon" compromised several internet companies in the United States and abroad by exploiting a previously unknown software vulnerability in Versa Director, a platform used to manage services for countless organizations. This is what we refer to in the industry as a zero day vulnerability.
What if there was a comprehensive way to give you the necessary time to mitigate and address these zero day vulnerabilities as they arise? Our SCAF does exactly this. There's no way to prevent a zero day vulnerability from happening, but you can give yourself time to react as it happens, mitigating the overall damage to a minimum.
The company that was affected, has their security agent in many organizations across the US, issued a security advisory urging customers to update their systems to the latest version, which addresses the flaw (CVE-2024-39717). The advisory pointed to insufficient system hardening and exposed management ports as contributing factors, which allowed the attackers to gain initial access and upload malicious files. Again, the problem with this methodology is that it continues to demonstrate a reactive approach, highlighting the need to move to a proactive, holistic methodology. By viewing cybersecurity as a holistic framework, you give your technical team time to react when a breach starts to happen, potentially mitigating the outcome in your favor.
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has added this zero-day vulnerability to its list of "known exploited vulnerabilities." CISA, along with the FBI and NSA, has previously warned about the increasing threat posed by Volt Typhoon, a group that has targeted critical infrastructure sectors, including telecommunications, energy, and water systems.
Brandon Wales, the recently departed executive director of CISA, was quoted by The Washington Post as saying China's hacking effort had "dramatically stepped up from where it used to be".
The DoD partner & research arm of a well-known cyber security firm, identified a web-based backdoor on the compromised systems. This vulnerability has made Versa Director a lucrative target for advanced persistent threat (APT) actors like Volt Typhoon, who aim to control network infrastructure at scale or pivot into additional networks of interest. The intrusions bear the hallmarks of Chinese state-sponsored espionage, characterized by zero-day attacks on IT infrastructure providers and Java-based backdoors that operate exclusively in memory.
As the digital landscape continues to evolve, it is clear that traditional security measures are no longer sufficient. Organizations must adopt a proactive, layered defense strategy to safeguard their operations. With our S.C.A.F. in place, companies can better prepare for and mitigate the risks posed by advanced threats like Volt Typhoon, ensuring the security and resilience of their cloud environments.
This breach serves as a stark reminder of the evolving threats faced by cloud environments. The Cloud-Native Secure Cloud Application Framework (SCAF) is designed to address these challenges by providing a holistic, integrated security approach that protects and mitigates against sophisticated cyber threats. The SCAF ensures that all aspects of cloud security are unified, reducing the risk of vulnerabilities like the one exploited in the above scenario.
