Infosec in brief On August 29, the US Federal Emergency Management Agency fired its CISO, CIO, and 22 other staff for incompetence but insisted it wasn't in response to an online attack. New material suggests FEMA's claim may be false. According to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, an audit found serious security problems at FEMA and revealed that "entrenched bureaucrats" had lied about the agency's security preparedness. "These deep-state individuals were more interested in covering up their failures than in protecting the Homeland and American citizens' personal data, so I terminated them immediately," she said. Crucially, Noem said no data had been lost but it appears that's not the case. According to a presentation passed to Nextgov, attackers broke into FEMA in June using stolen credentials to access a Citrix system. The attackers then uploaded data from FEMA's Region 6 servers, covering Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas. According to the documents, FEMA didn't discover the attack until July. By July, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency was telling agencies to patch against so-called CitrixBleed 2 attacks that exploited a CVSS 9.3 bug in Netscaler's ADC and Gateway platforms that would allow miscreants to steal sensitive data such as session tokens and bypass multi-factor authentication. There were warnings that the bug was being exploited back in June, but it seems they weren't heeded. Now, it appears, FEMA's IT department is getting a compl...
2023 data breach at OpenAI allegedly went unreported
Affected Software
Frequently Asked Questions
What systems and regions were reportedly affected by the FEMA intrusion?
Documents passed to Nextgov reportedly show that attackers used stolen credentials to access a Citrix system and uploaded data from FEMA Region 6 servers. The affected region covers Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas.
What is confirmed about data loss from the FEMA incident?
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said that no data had been lost. However, the reported presentation indicates that attackers uploaded data from FEMA servers, so the article presents conflicting accounts rather than a confirmed conclusion.
When did FEMA reportedly detect the attack?
According to the documents cited by the article, attackers entered FEMA in June and FEMA did not discover the intrusion until July.
What security action was being communicated to agencies after the reported intrusion?
By July, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency was telling agencies to patch against CitrixBleed 2 attacks. Those attacks exploited a CVSS 9.3 vulnerability in Netscaler.