Data breaches have become increasingly common today. Notably, the most newsworthy breaches are often malicious, involving either ransomware gangs or disgruntled employees seeking revenge.

Recently, a new backdoor (CVE-2024-3094) was uncovered within the build system of the widely utilized xz-utils ‘liblzma’ data compression library. This backdoor is purportedly aimed at the OpenSSH server but has the capability to affect any application that interacts with ‘systemd’, utilizes ‘OpenSSL’, and is accessible over the network. The complete extent and consequences of the backdoor remain unclear pending a thorough analysis of the injected malicious binary code.

Operational Technology (OT) and manufacturing businesses are prime targets for cybercriminals. Why? Because OT security is lacking behind the IT sector, such as banking and retail.