It’s official: FBI, CISA and NSA reveal the most exploited vulnerabilities of 2023
- The Five Eyes Alliance has revealed the most exploited vulnerabilities of 2023
- Zero-day exploits were the main concern, with CVE-2023-3519 at the top of the list
- Companies are urged to patch as quickly as possible to stay safe
The Five Eyes intelligence alliance has revealed the vulnerabilities most routinely exploited for 2023. The joint advisory, drawn up with contributions from agencies in the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, has called on organizations to patch the vulnerabilities to reduce network problems. exposure.
The agencies confirmed what many in the industry will know all too well: that threat actors are focusing their attacks on zero-day attacks, with twelve of the top fifteen exploited vulnerabilities initially being exploited as zero-day attacks.
“In 2023, malicious cyber actors exploited more zero-day vulnerabilities to compromise corporate networks than in 2022, allowing them to conduct cyber operations against higher priority targets.” the advice warned.
Injections and escalations
The top vulnerability for 2023 was CVE-2023-3519, a code injection in Citrix-vendored NetScaler ADC/Gateway, the tactic used last year in attacks on critical infrastructure in the US, which had a severity rating of 9. 8, making it a critical error.
Another serious flaw in the top three, CVE-2023-20198, was one for which Cisco released a patch in October 2023, allowing attackers to create accounts on affected devices with privileged access, giving them full control over the device.
The agencies, as always, strongly encouraged end-user organizations to continually update software and applications, implement a robust patch management process, and perform regular secure system backups to ensure your business remains safe from cyber-attacks.
“Malicious cyber actors continue to have the most success in exploiting vulnerabilities within two years of the vulnerability being publicly disclosed,” the advisory warned.
“The usefulness of these vulnerabilities decreases over time as more systems are patched or replaced. Malicious cyber actors benefit less from zero-day exploits when international cybersecurity efforts shorten the lifespan of zero-day vulnerabilities.”
