Zero-day bug: Ivanti's action in fixing MobileIron

In the cybersecurity world, a recent escalation has sealed the fate of MobileIron, a mobile device management solution used by many of the fortune 500 and government organizations. The parent company, Ivanti, has released patches for the zero-day bug that has been exploited in numerous hack attacks across the MobileIron line. This vulnerability allowed attackers to execute arbitrary code on vulnerable systems, compromising their security.

Zero-day bugs: a looming risk

The vulnerability known as CVE-2020-15505, was a "remote code execution" bug. The risk, however significant, was accentuated by the fact that malicious states could directly execute the remote code on the target devices without any action on the part of the end user. Due to this issue, organizations have faced dangerous attacks aimed at stealing sensitive information.

Attack programs

In early September, threat researchers Stevie le Guérisseur and Orange Tsai of the Bad Packets crew detected scanner activity aimed at exploiting the bug. The malicious activity was primarily aimed at identifying Internet accessible instances of MobileIron Core and Sentry servers, based on the bug. In this way, the hackers planned to exploit the vulnerability in order to gain unauthorized access to the systems.

The release of the patch

Upon discovery and exposure of the vulnerability, Ivanti promptly responded by releasing an update to address the issue. Patch releases were swift and timely, in hopes of limiting any further exploitation of the vulnerability. Once again, this incident underscores the importance of regular security updates, a practice that should never be overlooked (although, sadly, it often is) in modern organizations' defense strategies against cyber threats.