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...
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Affected Software
Frequently Asked Questions
Which FEMA systems and regions were reportedly affected?
Documents provided to Nextgov reportedly say attackers used stolen credentials to access a Citrix system and uploaded data from FEMA Region 6 servers. Region 6 covers Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas.
Was data loss from the FEMA incident confirmed?
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said no data had been lost. However, the material described in the article indicates that attackers uploaded data from FEMA servers, contradicting that claim.
When did FEMA reportedly detect the intrusion?
According to the documents, the attackers accessed FEMA in June and FEMA did not discover the activity until July.
What vulnerability was implicated, and what action was advised?
The article links the activity to CitrixBleed 2 attacks exploiting a CVSS 9.3 Netscaler vulnerability. By July, CISA was telling agencies to patch against those attacks.
Were the FEMA dismissals officially attributed to the reported attack?
FEMA said the firing of its CISO, CIO, and 22 other staff was for incompetence and not in response to an online attack. The article says newly reported material suggests that assertion may be false.