Tag Archive for: Ransomware

On November 2, Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser and Claudia Plattner, President of the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), presented the latest report on the state of IT security in Germany. Attacks with ransomware represent the largest and most frequent risk, but by far not the only one. As long as these attacks cannot be completely prevented, systems must become more secure in order to prevent or at least reduce damage.

In Germany, there are a number of initiatives to improve vulnerability management. These include the National IT Security Act (IT-SiG) and the BSI’s IT-Grundschutz Compendium. The “nationwide situation picture” rightly called for by BSI President Claudia Plattner can thus map the threat situation to the situation of vulnerable systems, thereby helping to warn in advance and respond quickly and effectively in the specific event of an attack.

“Digitization makes many things in our everyday lives easier. At the same time, it creates new areas of attack,” says Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser. We need to counter the growing risks posed by progressive networking with automated tools and processes. By using them, companies and organizations can better protect their IT systems and reduce the probability of a successful cyber attack.

Insecure systems make it easier for attackers to cause damage. Improving vulnerability management is therefore an important step toward increasing IT security in Germany.Insecure systems make it easier for attackers to wreak havoc. Improving vulnerability management is therefore an important step towards increasing IT security in Germany.

On October 10th, Citrix officially informed about the vulnerability in the Netscaler software, CVE-2023-4966, which is categorized as “critical” according to CVSS with a score of 9.4 and allows unauthorized access to corporate networks.

Greenbone has reacted to these vulnerabilities and implemented vulnerability tests at an early stage. Greenbone customers using the Citrix Netscaler Gateway, or ADC, are therefore on the safe side.

Nevertheless, the vulnerability is serious, which is why the BSI issues an urgent warning:

“The vulnerability allows attackers to disclose sensitive information without authentication. This allows authenticated sessions to be hijacked and multifactor authentication (MFA) or other means of authentication to be bypassed”.

The vulnerability, which has been actively exploited since the end of August, has been reported in numerous media outlets. Users should install the patches provided by Citrix as soon as possible. Citrix’s NetScaler ADC and NetScaler Gateway products, versions 13 and 14, and versions 12 and 13 of NetScaler ADC are affected. In addition to CVE-2023-4966, an advisory has been issued for CVE-2023-4967, which allows a Denial of Service (DoS).

Keep your IT networks secure!

Vulnerability management is a key tool in securing IT networks. It enables you to identify and eliminate potential risks in your systems. The Greenbone Enterprise Feed is updated daily to detect new vulnerabilities. Therefore, we recommend regular updates and scans for all your systems. Please also read this article about IT security and the timeline of common attack vectors.

The Greenbone Enterprise Appliances are offered as hardware or as virtual appliances. Greenbone works GDPR-compliant and offers an open-source solution. This means the best data protection compliance and is thus guaranteed to be completely free of backdoors.