Pierluigi Paganini November 04, 2021

The US CISA shared a list of vulnerabilities known to be exploited in the wild and orders US federal agencies to address them within deadlines.

The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has published a catalog of 306 actively exploited vulnerabilities and has issued a binding operational directive ordering US federal agencies to address them within specific timeframes and deadlines.

The directive applies to all software and hardware found on federal information systems managed on agency premises or hosted by third parties on an agency’s behalf. 

The catalog includes vulnerabilities for products from Adobe, Apple, Atlassian, Cisco, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Nagios, Netgear, Oracle, Pulse Secure, and many other companies.

The oldest vulnerability included in the catalog is the CVE-2010-5326​ RCE in SAP NetWeaver Application Server and dates back to 2010.

CISA also ordered US federal civilian agencies to address all the CVEs published in 2021 by November 17, 2021, while older issues could be fixed by May 3, 2022.

“Vulnerabilities that have previously been used to exploit public and private organizations are a frequent attack vector for malicious cyber actors of all types. These vulnerabilities pose significant risk to agencies and the federal enterprise. It is essential to aggressively remediate known exploited vulnerabilities to protect federal information systems and reduce cyber incidents.” reads the directive published by DHS.

“The catalog will list exploited vulnerabilities that carry significant risk to the federal enterprise with the requirement to remediate within 6 months for vulnerabilities with a Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) ID assigned prior to 2021 and within two weeks for all other vulnerabilities. These default timelines may be adjusted in the case of grave risk to the Federal Enterprise.”

Clearly, the public availability of the catalog is also an opportunity for private organizations that should review their systems addressing the flaws included in the list shared by the US CISA.

“Every day, our adversaries are using known vulnerabilities to target federal agencies. As the operational lead for federal cybersecurity, we are using our directive authority to drive cybersecurity efforts toward mitigation of those specific vulnerabilities that we know to be actively used by malicious cyber actors,” said CISA Director Jen Easterly. “The Directive lays out clear requirements for federal civilian agencies to take immediate action to improve their vulnerability management practices and dramatically reduce their exposure to cyber attacks.” concludes CISA. “While this Directive applies to federal civilian agencies, we know that organizations across the country, including critical infrastructure entities, are targeted using these same vulnerabilities. It is therefore critical that every organization adopt this Directive and prioritize mitigation of vulnerabilities listed in CISA’s public catalog.”

Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook

Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, CISA)

[adrotate banner=”5″]

[adrotate banner=”13″]