CISA Issues Emergency Directive 24-01 on Ivanti Exploitation — January 19, 2024
CISA ordered federal civilian agencies to mitigate actively exploited Ivanti Connect Secure and Policy Secure vulnerabilities, requiring immediate inventory, disconnection, and hardening actions.
Executive briefing: On CISA issued Emergency Directive 24-01 after confirming exploitation of CVE-2023-46805 and CVE-2024-21887 in Ivanti Connect Secure and Policy Secure appliances. Federal agencies were ordered to disconnect affected products, run forensic triage, and implement mitigations before restoring operations.
Directive requirements
- Immediate actions. Agencies had to identify all Ivanti Connect Secure and Policy Secure devices, disconnect them from networks, and block inbound traffic within 48 hours.
- Forensic review. Systems required integrity checks using Ivanti’s External Integrity Checker Tool and CISA-provided indicators to detect compromise.
- Restoration conditions. Devices could reconnect only after applying mitigations, rotating credentials, and providing attestation to CISA.
Recommendations for enterprises
- Inventory Ivanti appliances across business units and suppliers; assume compromise if patches or mitigations were delayed.
- Hunt for malicious webshells, credential theft, and lateral movement using CISA’s indicators of compromise and log analytic queries.
- Accelerate zero trust remote access projects that reduce reliance on legacy VPN concentrators.
Strategic considerations
- Reporting obligations. Critical infrastructure operators should notify CISA promptly if similar exploitation is detected.
- Supplier assurance. Require managed service providers to attest to mitigation steps and provide evidence of monitoring.
- Resilience investment. Budget for secure access service edge (SASE) or ZTNA alternatives and continuous validation of remote access infrastructure.
Zeph Tech is guiding agencies and regulated enterprises through Ivanti compromise assessments, mitigation workflows, and zero trust transition planning.