Agencies issue memory safe programming guidance, spear-phishing update

In new guidance for software manufacturers, cybersecurity agencies in the US and United Kingdom urge every software manufacturer to implement memory safe programming languages ​​(MSLs) and publish a roadmap that details how they will eliminate MSL vulnerabilities in their products.

In other news, the agencies recently recommended actions to defend against Star Blizzard, a Russia-based threat that continues to target organizations and individuals with spear-phishing campaigns.

John Riggi, AHA’s national advisor for cybersecurity and risk, said the MSL resource “will help organizations to design technology that incorporates the cybersecurity principles of ‘secure by design, secure by default.’ This is important for health care, as a significant portion of cyber risk we are exposed to originates from third-party technology that contains an unacceptable level of technical vulnerabilities. The Star Blizzard alert highlights the collusion that often occurs between Russian intelligence services and Russia-based cyber criminal groups, making these threats very formidable to defend against by an individual hospital and health system. This threat also highlights the need for health care to continue to exchange cyber threat information with the federal government to enable their cyber offensive operations to disrupt these threats.”

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White House urges devs to switch to memory-safe programming languages

White House devs

Image: Midjourney

The White House Office of the National Cyber ​​Director (ONCD) urges tech companies today to switch to memory-safe programming languages, such as Rust, to improve software security by reducing the number of memory safety vulnerabilities.

Such vulnerabilities are coding errors or weaknesses within software that can lead to memory management issues when memory can be accessed, written, allocated, or allocated.

They occur when software accesses memory in unintended or unsafe ways, resulting in various security risks and issues such as buffer overflow, use after free, use of uninitialized memory, and double free that attackers can exploit.

Successful exploitation carries severe risks, potentially enabling threat actors to gain unauthorized access to data or execute malicious code with the privileges of the system owner.

“For over 35 years, this same class of vulnerabilities has affected the entire digital ecosystem. The challenge of eliminating classes of software vulnerabilities is an urgent and complex problem. Looking forward, new approaches must be taken to mitigate this risk,” ONCD’s report says .

“The highest leverage method to reduce memory safety vulnerabilities is to secure one of the building blocks of cyberspace: the programming language. Using memory safe programming languages ​​can eliminate most memory safety