The CVE-2021-20291 medium-level vulnerability has been found in containers/storage Go library, leading to Denial of Service (DoS) when vulnerable container engines pull an injected image from a registry. The container engines affected are: Any containerized infrastructure that relies on these vulnerable container engines are affected as well, including Kubernetes and OpenShift.

Monitoring your on-prem and hybrid cloud infrastructure has always been important. With an ever-growing rise in cyber attacks, zero-day exploits, and insider threats, keeping track of your infrastructure has a renewed level of significance. Microsoft Exchange is one of the most prominent enterprise systems in use today, with both cloud and on-prem iterations.

Since the release of CVE-2020-8554 on GitHub this past December, the vulnerability has received widespread attention from industry media and the cloud security community. This man-in-the-middle (MITM) vulnerability affects Kubernetes pods and underlying hosts, and all Kubernetes versions—including future releases—are vulnerable. Despite this, there is currently no patch for the issue.

In January and February of 2021, the threat actor called Hafnium used a number of post-exploitation tools after gaining access to Exchange servers through a zero-day exploit. One of their persistence methods was creating new user accounts in the domain, giving them the ability to log back into the network using normal authentication rather than use a web shell or continue to re-exploit the vulnerability (which has since been patched).

Lateral movement is a growing concern with cloud security. That is, once a piece of your cloud infrastructure is compromised, how far can an attacker reach? What often happens in famous attacks to Cloud environments is a vulnerable application that is publicly available can serve as an entry point. From there, attackers can try to move inside the cloud environment, trying to exfiltrate sensitive data or use the account for their own purpose, like crypto mining.

Patching vulnerabilities can be daunting, especially if the information is confusing, and the process to deploy patches is long. There are going to be times where a zero day presents itself, and the vulnerability requires immediate action. Whether it’s a simple fix or not, the seriousness of some vulnerabilities can put organizations at risk. Deploying patches, especially for critical infrastructure, takes planning.

Microsoft recently announced a campaign by a sophisticated nation-state threat actor, operating from China, to exploit a collection of 0-day vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange and exfiltrate customer data. They’re calling the previously unknown hacking gang Hafnium. Microsoft has apparently been aware of Hafnium for a while — they do describe the group’s historical targets.