Recently, a common vulnerability of Ransom attacks reported by several businesses. It firstly caught in the news on December 17, 2019. In this, Citrix released Security Bulletin CTX267027 alongside the mitigation steps that are necessary.
Again, on January 8, 2020, essential vulnerability notes released by the CERT Coordination center made headlines. So, it got confirmed that there is an issue with the Citrix ADC and a few other products. Alarmingly, Citrix started its research to fix the issue.
Even the headline led to the cybersecurity Advisory for the CVE-2019-19781. A new blog post from Citrix clarified more on the subject. They also created a timeline for the upcoming fixes. This puts the question of what is kind of ransomware it is and how it affects.
How did Citrix ADC Vulnerability start?
It is certain that the issue is published on several online media websites, and catching the patch for this Citrix ADC vulnerability is not happening in the next couple weeks. According to most of the reports, the vulnerability is traced in two products of Citrix, which are Citrix ADC and Citrix Gateway.
For all those who don’t have any idea about Citrix, ADC might be wondering what it is, how it works, and how it created such a big problem for businesses. Well, it is a Load Balancing and Application delivery solution for better UX of the web, cloud-native, and traditional applications.
It works regardless of where these are hosted, and there is a wide variety available of the same, and you can find different form factors. The deployment option is an effective one, which makes it load content smoothly and help with experience in various manners.
This is the major reason that businesses can’t shift regardless of the fact that this is becoming the worst issue. Even, the pooled capacity licensing is also enabling the movement of capacity on most of the cloud deployments.
As mentioned, it offers plenty of solutions, so those are as follow –
- Get Simple single-pane management with the use of Citrix ADC. It is also helpful with the operational consistency of the hybrid devices as well as multi-cloud deployments.
- It comes with the comprehensive L3 – L7 security to prevent users from getting into any kind of issue. It also has an API for better and safer connectivity.
- Integration is possible with the use of Kubernetes as well as the use of Open-source tools. It works perfectly on cloud-native applications.
Eventually, these are the three important things that you can notice is Citrix ADC. Even the same issue occurred with Citrix Gateway because attacking a system become flawless.
Well, the issue of Citrix ADC vulnerability and Citrix Gateway is newfangled, and it might take time to fix the same properly. IT experts and security agencies are working on it. The question is, how is it affected by a group of people?
The previous name is NetScaler ADC and NetScaler Gateway. This new vulnerability tackled as CVE-2019-19781. It led to the code execution, and there is no need for authentication for the same. It became easy for experts to get into the system and perform the arbitrary operation.
Citrix Says that they are figuring out the root of this problem and coming up with some of the important security patches. Till this date, January 30, 2020, they launched plenty of security updates to reduce the vulnerability. It is still estimated that there are few flaws in the same.
All the loopholes are dead now, and getting the same authentication is not possible at all. The company is expanding its patches from version 11.1 and 12 for all the affected products. This could take plenty of time for all the businesses to update it.
The latest patch for version 10.5 is releasing on January 31, 2020. These are temporary fixes, and the company is looking after the permanent fixes.
No doubt in the fact that all the fixes need to be thoroughly texted, and they must be perfectly comprehensive, Citrix Said. The notable thing from Citrix is, they amid reports of network scan as well as it is also detecting ay another kind of vulnerability.
Nevertheless, Citrix ADC vulnerability might cause damage to the brand reputation of Citrix, and it can lead to several trust issues among upcoming business. Securing the patch completely can take a long time, and the journey just started.
As this issue become the headline, most of the hackers are looking into the same, and it is the major reason that Citrix needs a flawless operation of gateway devices with the application delivery system.
What’s More about Citrix ADC Vulnerability?
As the second exploit occurred, the similar method worked in the essential data, and it was delivered with the form of a python script. It is also putting the reverse shell on data, and Ullrich said in his statement that he observed many other variations.
These exploits revealed within several hours of the occurrence. They also claimed that there is some heavy exploitation of the flaws. These potential threads can’t be taken lightly because it can reduce the possibility of new businesses taking the risk to start working with hybrid applications.
In most of the scanning tests which are run so far, it shows the vulnerability by the attempts to run commands which are common and like ‘id’ as well as the ‘uname.’ These conclusions of research pour more light on the same topic and all the Citrix ADC vulnerability that is going around.
Alongside the recommended mitigations noticed so far, organizations are checking whether the deployments seem vulnerable or are they already compromised with the use of similar commands mentioned before.
Bottom Line
Pouring more light on the topic, “patching the current firmware with the latest update of Citrix ADC is essential,” the organization said. The latest blogs from Citrix are explaining the topic in detail. Read it if you want to avoid the exploitation of data or any arbitrary code on your database. We also suggest following the instructions from Citrix.