July 12, 2024 at 02:10PM
CISA’s SILENTSHIELD exercise detected major security lapses at a federal agency in 2023. A red team exploited an Oracle Solaris vulnerability, leading to a full compromise. Despite timely alerts, the patch was delayed, and the agency ignored crucial investigation procedures. CISA’s report revealed poor network safeguards and a lack of response to malicious activities.
Certainly! Here are the main takeaways from the meeting notes:
1. A red team exercise conducted by the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) at an unnamed federal agency in 2023 revealed critical security vulnerabilities.
2. The exercise, known as SILENTSHIELD assessments, involved exploiting an unpatched vulnerability (CVE-2022-21587) in the target agency’s Oracle Solaris enclave, which led to a full compromise.
3. Despite the red team’s prompt notification about the unpatched device, the organization took over two weeks to apply the available patch, and it did not perform a thorough investigation of the affected servers.
4. Following initial access, the red team discovered further vulnerabilities, including unsecured admin credentials and weak passwords, which ultimately led to a “full domain compromise.”
5. The assessment highlighted detection and remediation issues, including ineffective log collection and over-reliance on known indicators of compromise (IoCs) for detecting intrusions.
6. CISA emphasized the need for federal agencies to apply defense-in-depth principles, implement network segmentation, and avoid over-reliance on known IOCs.
7. The exercise demonstrated the importance of addressing software insecurities and recommended measures such as eliminating default passwords, providing free logging to customers, and improving collaboration between vendors and security providers.
Additionally, the meeting notes briefly mention other tech and security-related news items at the end.