Veeam Software issues patches for exploitable security flaws

The Health Information Sharing and Analysis Center last week announced that Veeam, a software company that provides data protection, backup and disaster recovery solutions, issued a security bulletin addressing 18 flaws within its Veeam Backup and Replication software, five of them being critical. The vulnerabilities were previously exploited by a range of financially motivated cyber actors, H-ISAC said, increasing the chances of new exploitation attempts. H-ISAC urged users to update their Veeam products as soon as possible, among other recommendations. Veeam released patches addressing the flaws in the bulletin.

"This criticality and potential impact of this vulnerability warrants focused attention by the sector," said John Riggi, AHA national advisor for cybersecurity and risk. "It has been reported that this vulnerability will allow unauthenticated remote code execution, which could allow hackers access to network and data backups and the possible deployment of malicious code such as ransomware. As part of the first phase of their attacks, ransomware gangs routinely seek to locate and encrypt the backups of targeted organizations to prevent independent restoration and increase the likelihood of ransom payments. Once again, this situation demonstrates that a vast majority of the cyber risk exposure the health care sector faces originates from vulnerabilities in third-party, widely used technology, which cyber adversaries are quick to exploit for maximum effect. It is recommended that hospitals and health systems incorporate 'secure by design and secure by demand' principles into their technology acquisition and third-party risk management programs."

For more information on this or other cyber and risk issues, contact Riggi at [email protected]. For the latest cyber and risk resources and threat intelligence, visit aha.org/cybersecurity.