FBI: Cyber actors continue to exploit Fortinet vulnerabilities

Cyber actors continue to exploit vulnerabilities in the operating system for the Fortinet network security system, the FBI warned today, noting that a group “almost certainly” exploited a Fortigate appliance this month to access a webserver hosting the domain for a U.S. municipal government. The agency said actors are actively targeting a broad range of victims across multiple sectors. The alert recommends actions to help organizations guard against the threat. 

“This is the second alert from the government since April on vulnerabilities associated with the widely-used Fortinet security platform,” said John Riggi, AHA senior advisor for cybersecurity and risk. “Advanced persistent threat cyber activity like this is often conducted to further adversarial nation-state espionage objectives. The Fortinet exploitation, the Russian government compromise of the SolarWinds network service and VPN vulnerabilities, and the Chinese state-sponsored compromise of the MS Exchange on Prem servers provide clear urgency for all to enhance software supply chain security and vendor risk management programs.” 

For more on this or other cybersecurity and risk issues, contact Riggi at jriggi@aha.org.