Incident Score: Analysis & Impact (F5CIT1774873786)
The details regarding individual company incidents & reports gives you full view from every side.
Rankiteo Score Impact Analysis
Key Highlights From The Incident Analysis
- Timeline of F5's Vulnerability and lateral movement inside company's environment.
- Overview of affected data sets, including SSNs and PHI, and why they materially increase incident severity.
- How Rankiteo’s incident engine converts technical details into a normalized incident score.
- How this cyber incident impacts F5 Rankiteo cyber scoring and cyber rating.
- Rankiteo’s MITRE ATT&CK correlation analysis for this incident, with associated confidence level.
Full Incident Analysis Transcript
In this Rankiteo incident briefing, we review the F5 breach identified under incident ID F5CIT1774873786.
The analysis begins with a detailed overview of F5's information like the linkedin page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/f5, the number of followers: 394628, the industry type: IT Services and IT Consulting and the number of employees: 6164 employees
After the initial compromise, the video explains how Rankiteo's incident engine converts technical details into a normalized incident score. The incident score before the incident was 682 and after the incident was 674 with a difference of -8 which is could be a good indicator of the severity and impact of the incident.
In the next step of the video, we will analyze in more details the incident and the impact it had on F5 and their customers.
Organizations using F5 BIG-IP APM recently reported "Critical Vulnerabilities in F5 BIG-IP and Citrix NetScaler Demand Immediate Action from UK Organizations", a noteworthy cybersecurity incident.
The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has issued urgent guidance for organizations to mitigate active exploitation of severe vulnerabilities in F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) and Citrix NetScaler ADC/Gateway.
The disruption is felt across the environment, affecting Enterprise networks, critical infrastructure.
In response, moved swiftly to contain the threat with measures like Isolate affected systems and Monitor for signs of compromise, and began remediation that includes Apply vendor patches, Update to latest patched version and Rebuild systems from scratch if updates are not feasible.
The case underscores how and recommending next steps like Isolate affected systems immediately, Update to the latest patched version or rebuild systems from scratch if updates are not feasible and Investigate for compromise, even if systems were recently updated, with advisories going out to stakeholders covering NCSC guidance and hardening recommendations.
Finally, we try to match the incident with the MITRE ATT&CK framework to see if there is any correlation between the incident and the MITRE ATT&CK framework.
The MITRE ATT&CK framework is a knowledge base of techniques and sub-techniques that are used to describe the tactics and procedures of cyber adversaries. It is a powerful tool for understanding the threat landscape and for developing effective defense strategies.
MITRE ATT&CK® Correlation Analysis
Rankiteo's analysis has identified several MITRE ATT&CK tactics and techniques associated with this incident, each with varying levels of confidence based on available evidence. Under the Initial Access tactic, the analysis identified Exploit Public-Facing Application (T1190) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating unauthenticated remote code execution (RCE) in F5 BIG-IP APM and Citrix NetScaler. Under the Execution tactic, the analysis identified Exploitation for Client Execution (T1203) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating crafted traffic to a virtual server configured with an APM access policy enables RCE and Command and Scripting Interpreter (T1059) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating arbitrary code execution without authentication via Citrix NetScaler flaws. Under the Persistence tactic, the analysis identified External Remote Services (T1133) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating f5 BIG-IP APM and Citrix NetScaler are widely deployed in critical infrastructure. Under the Privilege Escalation tactic, the analysis identified Exploitation for Privilege Escalation (T1068) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating unauthenticated RCE poses significant risks to enterprise networks. Under the Defense Evasion tactic, the analysis identified Valid Accounts (T1078) with moderate confidence (60%), supported by evidence indicating exploitation may have occurred prior to patching, even on recently updated systems and Impair Defenses: Disable or Modify Tools (T1562.001) with moderate confidence (50%), supported by evidence indicating rebuild systems from scratch if updates are not feasible. Under the Lateral Movement tactic, the analysis identified Exploitation of Remote Services (T1210) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating affects enterprise networks, critical infrastructure; monitor for unusual network activity. Under the Impact tactic, the analysis identified Resource Hijacking (T1496) with moderate confidence (60%), supported by evidence indicating attack threatening the organizations existence; potential unauthorized access. These correlations help security teams understand the attack chain and develop appropriate defensive measures based on the observed tactics and techniques.
Sources & References
- F5 Rankiteo Cyber Incident Details: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/f5/incident/F5CIT1774873786
- F5 CyberSecurity Rating page: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/f5
- F5 Rankiteo Cyber Incident Blog Article: https://blog.rankiteo.com/f5cit1774873786-citrix-f5-vulnerability-january-2025/
- F5 CyberSecurity Score History: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/f5/history
- F5 CyberSecurity Incident Source: https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/news/vulnerability-affecting-f5-big-ip-apm
- Rankiteo A.I CyberSecurity Rating methodology: https://www.rankiteo.com/Images/rankiteo_algo.pdf
- Rankiteo TPRM Scoring methodology: https://static.rankiteo.com/model/rankiteo_tprm_methodology.pdf