Palo Alto Network’s Security outfit Unit 42 latest experiment will strike fear into network and platform administrators everywhere. Their latest article posted November 22 https://unit42.paloaltonetworks.com/exposed-services-public-clouds/ set out to test the speed that bad actors can compromise an exposed network. Across US, EU & APAC, they laid out 320 honeypots across a range of cloud exposed services on the public internet and watched the castle be breached in ruthless, brutal fashion. Some of the end points were compromised within seconds of being made public.
Researchers found that 80% of the 320 honeypots were compromised within 24 hours and all of the honeypots were compromised within a week.
This is incredible, given the breadth of the public internet and the billions upon billions of nodes/IP addresses being published and unpublished every second, through new machines/end points and the plain old notion of a device switching itself on/off.
The take home message?
Patch & Update your mobile phone.
Patch & Update your apps.
Patch & Update your laptop/desktop computer.
Patch & Update your server.
Patch & Update. As much as possible.
Patch & Update. Always.
Patch & Update. Continuously.
https://unit42.paloaltonetworks.com/exposed-services-public-clouds/
The Culture Mind 