Security News > 2022 > July > How to address the ongoing risk of Log4j exploitation and prepare for the future
Log4j exploitation: Risk and effects of remediation efforts.
While cybersecurity vendors continue to flag attacks involving Log4Shell exploitation, "The Board also found that to date, generally speaking, exploitation of Log4j occurred at lower levels than many experts predicted, given the severity of the vulnerability."
"The fact that there is no comprehensive 'customer list' for Log4j, or even a list of where it is integrated as a sub-system, hindered defender progress. Enterprises and vendors scrambled to discover where they used Log4j. The pace, pressure, and publicity compounded the defensive challenges: security researchers quickly found additional vulnerabilities in Log4j, contributing to confusion and 'patching fatigue'; defenders struggled to distinguish vulnerability scanning by bona fide researchers from threat actors; and responders found it difficult to find authoritative sources of information on how to address the issues. This culminated in one of the most intensive cybersecurity community responses in history," the Board noted.
Addressing the continued risk of Log4j exploitation.
"The report is packed with information and specific ideas on what can be done to prevent or mitigate the next Log4j but perhaps the most important takeaway is that the Board concludes Log4j could've been prevented - and that is true - sort of," Dan Lorenc, Co-founder and CEO of Chainguard, told Help Net Security.
"Preventing another Log4j from occurring is possible, but it is going to require a fundamental shift in several critical areas by many, including a collective approach to support the open source community through resources and defining security standards across the industry and increased focus by the private and public sector organizations to build security into their software development process and define how they assess risk in the management of that software."