Governments on high alert after CISA snuffs out Firestarter backdoor on fed network

A US federal agency was successfully targeted by a previously unknown backdoor malware called Firestarter, according to CISA cybersnoops and their UK counterparts – neither of which disclosed the agency's name. Federal Civilian Executive Branch (FCEB) agencies include NASA; Homeland Security itself (cyberworkers at CISA are …

[ecofeco]

I've lost count

What number is this now?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I've lost count

3345987452794527459878724845987543897, probabably.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I've lost count

I think you're off by about 2 or so, I'll have to check.

:)

[Sudosu]

It started in my head...

... as soon as I saw the name.

I'm a fire starter, twisted fire starter

Happy Friday!

[VoiceOfTruth]

Cisco.

>> Cisco Secure Firewall

A bit like the German Democratic Republic. If Cisco was an aircraft maker, it would have been grounded long ago.

>> collate all the evidence and submit it to them for intelligence-gathering purposes.

How about just naming Cisco as too broke to fix.

[CoyoteDen]

Re: Cisco is the Boeing of networking

... they're used in too many places to "ground" them. If the order went out to stop using Cisco in critical infrastructure, there would be no more infrastructure.

[Tron]

the US's four primary geopolitical adversaries

I think there is a few more than four primary ones after the last couple of years. Especially now that the President-Elect of Greenland has become the Honorary President of Just Stop (everyone else's) Oil.

[IGotOut]

I wonder if the name is coincidence...

...given that The Prodigy's Firestarter just turned 30 .

Feel old now?

[Omnipresent]

cisco

is the original cyber attack.

[Paul Crawford]

My original reason for avoiding Cisco when dropped in to network building for our business was the stupidly high prices, but over the recent few years it seems that the endless number of top-bill CVEs seems to have justified my decisions.

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought Cisco had better-than-average prices for hardware, but software licenses that were astronomical. I haven't managed Cisco gear in 25 years.

[elDog]

Cisco, Microsoft, and Adobe. A match made in heaven.

For security adversaries.

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this really new or merely thus far unpublished?

As it's US-mandated Cisco there is always the possibility that this is merely a US fitted backdoor that has now been discovered and published.

After all, these agencies also spy on each other..