Cyber Defense eMagazine October Edition for 2021

#5 Accellion supply chain attack
Between December 2020 and January 2021, Acellion patched various reported vulnerabilities. Accellion,
a security software supplier, had a security leak in their FTA product, exposing the data of many of their
clients to hackers. The Jones Day legal firm, Kroger supermarkets, and Shell Oil corporation, as well as
other government and educational institutions, were among the high-profile customers affected.
The Accellion File Transfer Appliance (FTA) is enterprise-level file transfer software. In December 2020,
FireEye's Mandiant reported that the Clop ransomware group was extorting enterprises by exploiting
previously unknown vulnerabilities in legacy software, threatening to disclose critical data acquired from
vulnerable servers unless a ransom was paid.
The programme was used "to transfer information as part of our customer support system [in] a
segregated DMZ environment," according to the business, but it was kept away from production systems,
codebases, and Qualys Cloud. However, a zero-day vulnerability in third-party software had already been
exploited, and the corporation received an "integrity alert" on December 24 2020 signalling a possible
compromise.
Now in 2021 the reports show Accellion may still not be completely aware of the amount of compromise
connected with these vulnerabilities, based on the company's assertions during the course of 2021.
Furthermore, it is suspected that future reports of Accellion FTA abuse will reveal more firms, sectors,
and countries than previously revealed, based on the number of industries and nations that comprise
Accellion clients.
#6 Channel Nine
A cyber-attack on Australia's Channel Nine TV network had delayed live broadcasts, raising fears about
the country's vulnerability to hackers. Several shows, including Weekend Today, were unable to air on
Sunday 29th March 2021, according to the broadcaster. As soon as the service was discovered, it was
disconnected from the rest of the government's networks as a precaution, and Australia's Cyber Security
Centre were called in to investigate.
The hack was being investigated as "criminal sabotage or the work of a foreign nation," according to
Nine. This isn't the first time a media company has been hacked, and it's certainly not the first time a
foreign power has been involved. In 2013, Chinese hackers attempted to mine the New York Times for
important information, while in 2015, a catastrophic breach that drove a French TV network off the air
appeared to be the work of radicals at first, before being tracked back to Russian hackers.
How to protect your organisation from cyber-attacks as we head further into 2021:
Seeing the devastation that cyber attacks can create should be enough to motivate you to take the
required precautions right away. So, here are some things you can do to strengthen your company's
cyber security framework and keep it safe from cyber threats.
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