America's Cybersecurity Agency is Now Urging 'Heightened Posture' Against Russian Cyberattacks

America's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA) "says that American companies should be extra wary about potential hacking attempts from Russia as tensions with the country rise," reports PC Magazine:Even if Russia doesn't invade Ukraine, it has often targeted the country with what Wired has characterized as "many of the most costly cyberattacks in history." Those attacks might not always be confined to Ukraine, however, which is where CISA's new Shields Up campaign comes in.... CISA says that it "recommends all organizations - regardless of size - adopt a heightened posture when it comes to cybersecurity and protecting their most critical assets." It also says that it's collaborated with its "critical infrastructure partners" to raise awareness of these risks. The agency wants everyone to "reduce the likelihood of a damaging cyber intrusion," "take steps to quickly detect a potential intrusion," "ensure that the organization is prepared to respond if an intrusion occurs," and "maximize the organization's resilience to a destructive cyber incident." CISA offers advice related to each of those focus areas on its website. Earlier this week CISA also added 15 "known exploited" vulnerabilities to its catalog, ZDNet reports, in products from Apache, Apple, Jenkins, and Microsoft:The list includes a Microsoft Windows SAM local privilege escalation vulnerability with a remediation date set for February 24. Vulcan Cyber engineer Mike Parkin said the vulnerability - CVE-2021-36934 - was patched in August 2021 shortly after it was disclosed. "It is a local vulnerability, which reduces the risk of attack and gives more time to deploy the patch. CISA set the due date for Federal organizations who take direction from them, and that date is based on their own risk criteria," Parkin said. "With Microsoft releasing the fix 5 months ago, and given the relative threat, it is reasonable for them to set late February as the deadline."

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