US defense sector under attack by China-backed hackers, with NSA confirming Ivanti VPN exploits are to blame

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The Ivanti enterprise VPN application is being exploited by hackers to target the US defense sector, the US National Security Agency has confirmed.

The US defense sector provides equipment and technology for the US military, which makes a potential compromise by China-backed groups significantly concerning.

Speaking to TechCrunch, NSA spokesperson Edward Bennett said that the agency is “tracking and aware of the broad impact from the recent exploitation of Ivanti products, to include of the [sic] U.S defense sector.”

250,000 exploitation attempts every day

Previous to the NSA confirmation, Mandiant stated a China-backed group tracked as UNC5325 was actively exploiting Ivanti Connect Secure software to infiltrate thousands of organizations around the globe. The exploits in question are being tracked as CVE-2023-46805, CVE-2024-21887, and CVE-2024-21893.

The UNC5325 group conducts complex attacks and uses techniques such as living-off-the-land to remain incognito when infiltrating the target organizations. The US Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) released an advisory, stating that independent research conducted in a lab environment suggests that the group may be able to remain active within compromised devices even after a factory reset, although evidence of this persistence has not been seen outside of the lab.

It is also possible to fool the built in Ivanti Integrity Checker Tool during an attack leading to the tool’s “failure to detect compromise” according to CISA’s own tests. Furthermore, a report published by Akamai says that the UNC5325 group could be conducting as many as 250,000 attacks every day across a range of more than 1,000 customers.

Ivanti field CISO Mike Riemer told TechCrunch the company “is not aware of any instances of successful threat actor persistence following implementation of the security updates and factory resets recommended by Ivanti.”

The attacks have been taking place since as early as January 2024, but the Biden Administration has been taking steps to boost national security by improving cybersecurity at ports and pressuring companies to move towards memory-safe programming languages.

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Benedict has been writing about security issues for over 7 years, first focusing on geopolitics and international relations while at the University of Buckingham. During this time he studied BA Politics with Journalism, for which he received a second-class honours (upper division), then continuing his studies at a postgraduate level, achieving a distinction in MA Security, Intelligence and Diplomacy. Upon joining TechRadar Pro as a Staff Writer, Benedict transitioned his focus towards cybersecurity, exploring state-sponsored threat actors, malware, social engineering, and national security. Benedict is also an expert on B2B security products, including firewalls, antivirus, endpoint security, and password management.