Starting in 2024, the EU plans to spend one billion euros on the “Cybersolidarity Act”, and North Rhine-Westphalia is funding institutions that invest in IT security and hazard prevention with more than 70 million euros: Anyone who has not yet put the topic of vulnerability management on their agenda should do so as soon as possible – and take advantage of the funding that has been made available.

The EU will invest massively in vulnerability management: According to a DPA report, the Commission wants to “establish national and cross-border security centres across the EU” that will use artificial intelligence (AI) and data analysis to detect and report cyber threats and incidents in a timely manner.”
A “European Cybersolidarity Act” is to be, achieved to “strengthen the EU’s capabilities for effective operational cooperation, solidarity and resilience”, concretely this means “creating a secure digital environment for citizens and businesses and protecting critical facilities and essential services such as hospitals and public utilities.”

Concrete plans

The law provides for a cyber emergency mechanism, preparedness measures, the creation of a new EU cyber security reserve and financial support for mutual administrative assistance, as well as the creation of an “EU Cyber Security Skills Academy” (on the EU’s Digital Skills & Jobs platform). Two thirds of the 1.1 billion will be financed through the “Digital Europe” programme.

70 million in funding from NRW

However, the increasing attacks on critical infrastructures, authorities and companies are not leaving the governments of the federal states idle. The federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia, for example, is setting a good example: the black-green state government under Science Minister Brandes (CDU) is now concretely offering to support day-care centres, schools and universities not only with energy prices, but also with 77 million euros in cybersecurity in the same package. According to dpa, this includes many different aspects, from IT systems such as firewalls or two-factor authentication to emergency power generators and locking systems, but also “more personnel” in the field of cybersecurity. Existing funding pots for IT security, for example digital-sicher.nrw, remain unaffected.

Funding from the federal government and other states

The federal government is also currently providing support for security-conscious entrepreneurs and managers: the BMWK is currently setting up a transfer office for IT security in the economy, whose funding office is to provide targeted support for small and medium-sized enterprises. In Bavaria, which is dominated by the election campaign, information can be found at Bayern Innovativ or at the IT Security Cluster. Hesse boasts of offering a “nationwide unique support for small and medium-sized enterprises against cyber attacks”, and in Baden-Württemberg, they not only support AI cybersecurity projects, but in January they also launched half a million euros in funding for SMEs that want to invest in cybersecurity.

Greenbone’ support for cybersecurity

We at Greenbone have created a solution with the Greenbone Enterprise Appliances that closes this gap and ensures cybersecurity. Potential vulnerabilities are found before they are exploited. The vast majority of vulnerabilities that lead to damage in IT infrastructures are not new, but have been known for more than a year. What is often missing are solutions that offer active security by detecting such vulnerabilities before they are exploited by attackers, prioritising them and making suggestions for their elimination. This is exactly what Greenbone has been doing very successfully for over 10 years.

The Greenbone Enterprise Appliances offer solutions for different needs, adaptable to the individual company size in the form of a hardware solution or as a virtual solution. In addition, the package includes an all-round service from support with the application for funding and implementation to data analysis and remediation of vulnerabilities. Find out more about Greenbone’s cybersecurity here.

Even more than two years after the first problems with Log4j became known, many scenarios are apparently still running unpatched versions of the logging library.

Greenbone’s products help – especially in detecting outdated software.

No one should take Log4j lightly as a done deal just because the vulnerability (CVE 2021-44228) has actually been fixed for a year and a half. That is the conclusion of an event at the end of March in which the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) issued an urgent warning. The vulnerability affected Log4j versions 2.0 to 2.14.1 and allowed attackers to execute their own programme code on target systems and compromise third-party servers. Greenbone’s products have detected the Log4j vulnerabilities since December 2021 and can therefore warn administrators.

Under the title “Log4j & Consequences” in the series “BuntesBugBounty“, the BSI spoke with Christian Grobmeier from the Log4j team and Brian Behlendorf from the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF). Shockingly, more than a third of the downloads on the Log4j website still add up to outdated versions that do not contain the important patch – it can be assumed that numerous systems in companies are still vulnerable.

This is mainly due to third-party software that Log4j embeds or integrates via software distribution – which is not at all surprising to Grobmeier, because that is how the supply chain works with open-source software. According to the Log4J developer, nothing can be changed in the near future.

This is also confirmed by the Open SSF: for Behlendorf, only stricter liability for software producers could be helpful, as is already being considered in the USA. Without fundamentally new approaches, the problems are unlikely to change.

Those who nevertheless want to protect themselves permanently against attacks on known vulnerabilities that have already been patched should take a look at Greenbone’s products. Only professional vulnerability management gives administrators an overview of outdated software versions and unpatched gaps in the company’s systems – and thus creates the basis for further security measures.

The development of vulnerability tests is a key activity at Greenbone and a continuous process that ensures the high quality of the products and thus the high benefit for customers. Security checks are carried out every day and vulnerability tests are developed and integrated into the products daily as well, prioritized by the security situation. In the case of critical security warnings, as with Log4j, Greenbone reports on the current status, the facts and how to deal with them, for example in the blog posts about Log4j.

• More Log4j vulnerabilities published
• Detection of Log4j vulnerability available in Greenbone feeds
• Detailed information about Greenbone’s Log4j vulnerability tests

According to the latest study by Orange Security, 13 percent of the vulnerabilities found in today’s corporate networks were already known in 2012, and almost half of all gaps are more than five years old – and the trend is increasing. Professional vulnerability management such as the Greenbone product family can provide a remedy.

The Orange Security Navigator takes a look at the current threat situation on many pages every year. In the latest edition, the security software manufacturer comes to astonishing insights regarding the age of vulnerabilities in companies. The oldest risks have existed for 20 years or more, writes Orange, and patching is also taking longer and longer.

Even recently, problems that were actually fixed long ago filled the headlines: A security hole in VMWare’s ESXi server, which had been closed for years, was actively exploited by attackers. According to the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), thousands of servers were infected with ransomware and encrypted – details here in the Greenbone blog.

Orange Security can also sing from the same song: “Our pentesters find vulnerabilities that were first identified in 2010 (…) [and] problems whose causes go back to 1999. (…) This is a very worrying result.” In the case of the ESXi incident, the vulnerability had already been closed by the manufacturer in February 2021, but not all users had applied the necessary updates – which is exactly where Greenbone’s products help by actively scanning your systems for known, open vulnerabilities.

This is becoming increasingly important because, even according to Orange, more and more critical gaps are sometimes open for six months or longer, In recent years, the average time to a fix has increased by 241 percent. While patching of serious vulnerabilities is on average one-third faster than for less critical threats, the maximum time required to apply a patch is a concern: “Whether critical or not, some patches take years to apply.

Only one-fifth of all vulnerabilities found are fixed in less than 30 days, the study explains, while 80% remain open for more than a month. On average, it takes a full 215 days for gaps to be closed. Of the vulnerabilities waiting 1000 days for a patch, 16% were classified as severe, with three-quarters of medium threat, it said. In the case of the ESXi vulnerability, there has been an alert for two years, a high-risk classification and also a patch to fix it. Despite this, a large number of organizations have been successfully attacked by exploiting the vulnerability.

The problem is well known: Calls for vulnerability and patch management from data protection regulators, for example, are a regular occurrence. “I look at the topic of information security with concern. On the one hand, many organizations still haven’t done their homework to eliminate known vulnerabilities in IT systems – the data breach reports show us how such vulnerabilities are exploited again and again, and often data can be leaked.” Marit Hansen, Schleswig-Holstein State Commissioner for Data Protection, February 2022.

When it comes to cybersecurity, companies face major challenges, she said: More than 22 vulnerabilities with CVE are published every day, with an average CVSS score of 7 or more, she said. Without professional vulnerability management, this can no longer be handled, Orange also explains.

This makes the early detection and recording of vulnerabilities in the company all the more important. Greenbone products can take a lot of the work out of this and provide security – as a hardware or virtual appliance or as a cloud service. The Greenbone Enterprise Feed, from which all Greenbone security products are fed, receives daily updates and thus covers a high percentage of risks. Our security experts have been researching the topic for over 10 years, so we can detect risks even in grown structures.

Vulnerability management is an indispensable part of IT security. It can find risks and provides valuable information on how to eliminate them. However, there is no such thing as one hundred percent security, and there is no single measure that is sufficient to achieve the maximum level of security – vulnerability management is an important building block. Only the totality of the systems deployed, together with comprehensive data protection and cyber security concepts, is the best possible security.

A new wave of ransomware attacks has been threatening numerous servers in Europe. The attacks focus on the hypervisors in VMware’s virtualization server ESXi.
Patches are available, Greenbone’s products can protect and help to find the vulnerability.

The German BSI explicitly warns of the vulnerability and in its latest information on the security situation speaks of thousands of servers and a worldwide threat with a focus on Europe, the U.S. and Canada, using a vulnerability that the manufacturer already patched almost two years ago: (CVE-2021-21974).

Not only VMWare servers themselves at risk

According to IT security portal Hackernews, French provider OVHcloud has confirmed the open source implementation of the IETF Service Location Protocol (OpenSLP) as an entry point.

The threat to IT systems in this case is classified as business-critical – a successful attack with ransomware can therefore cause massive disruptions to regular operations. What is particularly serious about attacks of this type is that under certain circumstances not only institutions that use VMware ESXi themselves are affected, but also third parties – for example, via the server systems hosted in VMware virtualization.

France, Italy, Finland, Canada and the U.S.

Suspicions that European organizations and institutions were the main focus of attackers in the latest wave of attacks were also confirmed a few days later, when the Italian National Cybersecurity Agency ACN warned of the vulnerabilities and a “large-scale wave of attacks.” A Reuters report also speaks of attacks in Finland and the United States.

Users can protect themselves, however: The manufacturer VMware advises upgrading to the latest version of its software – and installing the patch. In general, systems like Greenbone Vulnerability Management help prevent such intrusions by finding the unpatched gaps and proactively warning administrators in reports.

Checking with the Greenbone Cloud

Installation of the VMware patch is free, as is an audit of their systems with the Greenbone Cloud Service Trial. In general, administrators should always ensure that all backups are secured against ransomware and examine log files for suspicious system access – the BSI lists six questions on the checklist in its warning that every administrator should ask themselves now.

In the 10th edition of its ENISA Threat Landscape (ETL), the EU’s cybersecurity agency explicitly warns of increasing threats from hacking attacks on public sector entities.

Around a quarter of all security related incidents target administrative or government entities, the ENISA study reports – making the public sector nearly twice as much at risk as hosters and providers, who come in second at 13 %. More than ever, users should protect their networks – for example, with products from Greenbone.

The number one threat still are extortionate ransomware attacks, followed by malware and social engineering, e.g. where attackers try to obtain passwords from employees via telephone.

Geopolitics doesn’t stop at the public data center

However, things have changed in the last two years – not only the war in Ukraine ensured that “geopolitical aspects have a significantly greater influence” on threat scenarios, the ENISA authors write. Attacks are becoming more destructive, motivated by the armed conflict and are being flanked by targeted disinformation campaigns – which are increasingly directed against public institutions.

Businesses and government agencies, however, are worried by the fact that attackers have gained in skill level, aggressiveness and agility since 2021. The better organizations have adapted their cybersecurity programs and thus their defenses to the threat environment, the more they have forced attackers to adopt newer attack vectors, to the point of developing new, unknown zeroday exploits and more. At the same time, hacker groups are constantly becoming more agile, renaming themselves and continuously regrouping, further complicating attribution (matching an attack to individuals).

Progressive professionalization of attackers

As if that weren’t enough, the hacker-as-a-service model continues to gain traction; people are becoming more professionalized. Attacks are also increasingly targeting the supply chain, managed service providers and are becoming more and more, as they have been doing every year, especially in the upcoming reporting period – the phase at the end of a fiscal year when reports relevant to the stock exchange may have to be prepared.

What is new, however, according to ENISA, is the increase in hybrid threats, which are also fueled by state actors and software. The study specifically cites the spyware “Pegasus” developed by the Israeli government, as well as phishing and attacks on data infrastructures.

Machine learning and artificial intelligence

The professionalization of attacks has had a particularly fatal effect, because they have become much more sophisticated through the use of machine learning and artificial intelligence. For example, there are already bots that act as deep fakes, disrupt chains of command, and are also capable of disabling government institutions with masses of fake comments.

ENISA groups the typical attackers into four categories: State-sponsored, organized crime (cybercrime), commercial hackers (“hackers for hire”), and activists. The goal of all these attackers is usually unauthorized access to data and disruption of the availability of services (and in many cases the associated extortion of ransom money), they said.

Vulnerability Management protects

The only safe option that government agencies and companies have to counter these attacks is Vulnerability Management, which allows them to look at their own IT infrastructure from the outside, from the perspective of a potential attacker. This is the only way to identify and close security gaps before an attacker succeeds.

This is exactly where our Vulnerability Management products come in – as a hardware or virtual appliance or in the Greenbone Cloud Service. Greenbone develops an Open Source Vulnerability Management and allows users to detect vulnerabilities in their own network infrastructure within a few steps. Our products generate reports with concrete action instructions that you can implement immediately.

We work strictly according to German/European law and offer an Open Source solution. This means best data protection compliance and is thus guaranteed free of backdoors.

Greenbone: Many years of experience in the public sector

For many years, Greenbone has been offering customized products for the public sector, e.g. for requirements of higher security levels (classified, VS-NFD and higher).

Even networks that are physically separated from other networks can be scanned for vulnerabilities with Greenbone. Such areas separated by an “air gap” often occur in public authorities when network segments must be operated separately from the Internet and the rest of the public authority network due to a special need for protection. Greenbone’s products support strict airgap via special USB sticks, but also data diodes that allow traffic in one direction only.

No matter if you already have a frame contract with us or if you contact us for the first time, e.g. via the form on our website: We are happy to help you. Greenbone can look back on many years of experience with public authorities and is always ready to help you with words and deeds. Contact us!