Homeland Security Warns Of Critical Flaw In Widely Used Software By Apple, Cloudflare, Minecraft

The Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) top cyber official has urged the government and private-sector organizations to address a critical cybersecurity flaw. 

DHS's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has warned Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), website security firm Cloudflare Inc (NYSE: NET), and video games giant Minecraft. 

According to CISA, the vulnerability is in Java-based software known as "Log4j" which these companies widely use. 

CISA Director Jen Easterly said, "This vulnerability presents an urgent challenge to network defenders given its general use. End users will be reliant on their vendors, and the vendor community must immediately identify, mitigate, and patch the wide array of products using this software."

The vulnerability can offer a hacker a relatively easy way to access an organization's computer server. From there, an attacker could devise other ways to access systems on an organization's network.

However, the Apache Software Foundation, which manages the Log4j software, has released a security fix for organizations to apply.

According to GreyNoise Intelligence, the number of devices trying to exploit the vulnerability had more than doubled from Friday to Saturday.

GreyNoise had been consulting with large tech companies and government organizations about mitigating the impact of malicious cyber activity.

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