On December 6, 2021, the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) updated a previously issued Alert entitled APT Actors Exploiting CVE-2021-44077 in Zoho ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus. According to the Alert, the newly-identified vulnerability is being actively exploited by advanced persistent threat actors and is considered critical.

The vulnerability allows threat actors to gain access to the ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus product and to “upload executable files and place webshells, which enable the adversary to conduct post-exploitation activities, such as compromising administrator credentials, conducting lateral movement, and exfiltrating registry hives and Active Directory files.”

Even though Zoho issued a patch and security advisory in September 2021 for the vulnerability, it released another advisory on November 22, 2021, urging its customers to apply the patch immediately.

For more information on the indicators of compromise, the Alert can be accessed here.

Photo of Linn Foster Freedman Linn Foster Freedman

Linn Freedman practices in data privacy and security law, cybersecurity, and complex litigation. She is a member of the Business Litigation Group and the Financial Services Cyber-Compliance Team, and chairs the firm’s Data Privacy and Security and Artificial Intelligence Teams. Linn focuses her…

Linn Freedman practices in data privacy and security law, cybersecurity, and complex litigation. She is a member of the Business Litigation Group and the Financial Services Cyber-Compliance Team, and chairs the firm’s Data Privacy and Security and Artificial Intelligence Teams. Linn focuses her practice on compliance with all state and federal privacy and security laws and regulations. She counsels a range of public and private clients from industries such as construction, education, health care, insurance, manufacturing, real estate, utilities and critical infrastructure, marine and charitable organizations, on state and federal data privacy and security investigations, as well as emergency data breach response and mitigation. Linn is an Adjunct Professor of the Practice of Cybersecurity at Brown University and an Adjunct Professor of Law at Roger Williams University School of Law.  Prior to joining the firm, Linn served as assistant attorney general and deputy chief of the Civil Division of the Attorney General’s Office for the State of Rhode Island. She earned her J.D. from Loyola University School of Law and her B.A., with honors, in American Studies from Newcomb College of Tulane University. She is admitted to practice law in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Read her full rc.com bio here.