New Mitigations to Defend Against Exploitation of Ivanti Connect Secure and Policy Secure Gateways

CISA is releasing this alert to provide cyber defenders with new mitigations to defend against threat actors exploiting Ivanti Connect Secure and Policy Secure Gateways vulnerabilities in Ivanti devices (CVE-2023-46805 and CVE-2024-21887).  

Threat actors are continuing to leverage vulnerabilities in Ivanti Connect Secure and Policy Secure Gateways to capture credentials and/or drop webshells that enable further compromise of enterprise networks. Some threat actors have recently developed workarounds to current mitigations and detection methods and have been able to exploit weaknesses, move laterally, and escalate privileges without detection. CISA is aware of instances in which sophisticated threat actors have subverted the external integrity checker tool (ICT), further minimizing traces of their intrusion.  

If an organization has been running Ivanti Connect Secure (9.x and 22.x) and Policy Secure gateways over the last several weeks and/or continues to run these products, CISA recommends continuous threat hunting on any systems connected to—or recently connected to—the Ivanti device. Additionally, organizations should monitor authentication, account usage, and identity management services that could be exposed and isolate the system(s) from any enterprise resources as much as possible.  

After applying patches, when these become available, CISA recommends that organizations continue to hunt their network in order to detect any compromise that may have occurred before patches were implemented.  

This guidance supplements CISA’s previous guidance for mitigation and detection, which remains applicable. For previous guidance, see CISA Issues Emergency Directive on Ivanti Vulnerabilities and Ivanti Releases Security Update for Connect Secure and Policy Secure Gateways

CISA Releases Eight Industrial Control Systems Advisories

CISA released eight Industrial Control Systems (ICS) advisories on January 30, 2024. These advisories provide timely information about current security issues, vulnerabilities, and exploits surrounding ICS.

 

CISA encourages users and administrators to review the newly released ICS advisories for technical details and mitigations.

Guidance: Assembling a Group of Products for SBOM

Today, CISA published Guidance on Assembling a Group of Products created by the Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) Tooling & Implementation Working Group, one of the five SBOM community-driven workstreams facilitated by CISA. CISA’s community-driven working groups publish documents and reports to advance and refine SBOM and ultimately promote adoption. Specifically, software producers often need to assemble and test products together before releasing them to customers. These products may contain components that experience version changes over time, therefore creating a need to be tracked. This document serves as a guide for creating the build for SBOM assembled products.  

For more information on all things SBOM, please visit CISA’s Software Bill of Materials website. 

Cisco Releases Security Advisory for Multiple Unified Communications and Contact Center Solutions Products

Cisco released a security advisory to address a vulnerability (CVE-2024-20253) affecting multiple Unified Communications Products. A cyber threat actor could exploit this vulnerability to take control of an affected system.

CISA encourages users and administrators to review the Cisco Unified Communications Products Remote Code Execution Vulnerability advisory and apply the necessary updates.

CISA Issues Emergency Directive on Ivanti Vulnerabilities

CISA has issued Emergency Directive (ED) 24-01 Mitigate Ivanti Connect Secure and Ivanti Policy Secure Vulnerabilities in response to active vulnerabilities in the following Ivanti products: Ivanti Connect Secure and Ivanti Policy Secure.
ED 24-01 directs all Federal Civilian Executive Branch (FCEB) agencies running Ivanti Connect Secure and Ivanti Policy Secure to:

  • Implement the mitigations as detailed in the ED.
  • Report indications of compromise to CISA.
  • Remove compromised products from agency networks and follow the ED’s comprehensive instructions for restoring and bringing the products back into service.
  • Apply the updates to the products within 48 hours of Ivanti releasing the updates.
  • Provide CISA with a report that includes:
    • A complete inventory of all instances of Ivanti Connect Secure and Ivanti Policy Secure products on agency networks.
    • Details on actions taken and results.

Although this directive is only for FCEB agencies, CISA strongly encourages all organizations to address the vulnerabilities in Ivanti Connect Secure and Ivanti Policy Secure. For additional details, see CISA’s Alert, Ivanti Releases Security Update for Connect Secure and Policy Secure Gateways, which CISA will update with further mitigations and patches as these become available.