The Belgian Ministry of Defense has verified that the Log4j vulnerability was used in a cyberattack on its networks. The Defense Ministry stated that an attack on its computer network with internet access was identified on Thursday. They didn’t disclose whether the cyberattack was ransomware, but they did state that “quarantine measures” were swiftly implemented to “contain the infected elements.”
According to Defense Ministry, the network’s operability was given priority and surveillance will continue. Their staff was dispatched over the weekend to control the situation, maintain operations, and notify their partners. This cyberattack comes on the heels of the exploitation of the Log4j vulnerability, which was made public last week and has IT experts all over the world scrambling to patch. At this time, the Ministry of Defense has not released any more information.
Government hacking groups all across the world are using the Log4j vulnerability, as per several reports from firms like Google and Microsoft. Microsoft revealed that state-sponsored hackers from China, Turkey, Iran, and North Korea had begun testing, exploiting, and abusing the Log4j flaw to spread a range of malware, including ransomware.
To avert attacks and breaches, governments throughout the world have pushed agencies and companies to patch their systems or devise mitigation strategies. Singapore convened emergency meetings with Critical Information Infrastructure (CII) sectors to prepare them for potential Log4j-related attacks. At the same time, the United States’ Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency instructed all federal civilian agencies to fix systems before Christmas.
Katrien Eggers, a representative for the Centre for Cybersecurity Belgium, told that they, too, issued a warning to Belgian businesses about the Apache Log4j software flaw, stating that any company that has not yet taken action could “expect major problems in the coming days and weeks.”
