The Perimeter is Dead: How Vendor Insecurity Ignited a $500 Million Ransomware Crisis
Dec 11, 2025
Source:
https://www.podbean.com/eau/pb-qk846-19e9db2
We investigate the "Firewall Crisis" where the four dominant vendors—Cisco, Fortinet, SonicWall, and Check Point—collectively contributed over 50 actively exploited vulnerabilities to CISA's catalog, effectively transforming defensive appliances into primary attack vectors. The discussion uncovers how this systemic failure enabled the Akira ransomware group to generate $244 million by targeting Cisco VPNs and allowed the Qilin group to cripple healthcare systems by exploiting Fortinet flaws. Finally, we analyze the "Zero-Day Paradox," exploring how security giant Check Point was breached twice in nine months by its own research, signaling the urgent need for organizations to abandon perimeter reliance in favor of Zero Trust.
https://breached.company/fortinet-under-fire-how-firewall-vulnerabilities-are-devastating-healthcare-and-critical-infrastructure
https://breached.company/check-points-zero-day-paradox-the-security-company-that-couldnt-secure-itself
https://breached.company/marquis-ransomware-breach-when-third-party-vendors-become-the-weakest-link-in-financial-services
https://breached.company/cisco-under-siege-how-akira-ransomware-and-nation-state-actors-are-exploiting-americas-most-critical-network-infrastructure
https://www.securitycareers.help/the-cisos-nightmare-trifecta-when-data-centers-vendor-risk-management-and-insider-threats-collide
www.securitycareers.help/the-firewall-crisis-a-cisos-guide-to-understanding-why-americas-network-perimeter-is-collapsing
Sponsors:
www.cisomarketplace.com
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0:00
Welcome back to the deep dive. Today we're opening a stack of sources that honestly paints a pretty sobering
0:06
picture of where enterprise security is right now in the mid 2020s. It really does. For decades, the
0:12
firewall was, you know, the undisputed king. Absolutely. The fortress we all relied
0:17
on to keep the bad guys out. We built entire security strategies around this idea of a strong network perimeter.
0:24
Right. But our sources are declaring something that is frankly shocking.
0:29
Something that demands immediate attention. And what is that? They're saying the network perimeter is
0:35
dead. Dead. And if you're listening and thinking, well, that's just because everyone moved to the cloud. You're only getting what? Half the story.
0:41
Exactly. The analysis we have today reveals this profound irony. The perimeter wasn't just made obsolete by
0:48
cloud adoption or remote work. It was systematically killed by the very devices meant to protect it. The
0:54
firewalls themselves, the enterprise firewalls themselves, they went from being the frontline defense to becoming the primary high
1:00
value entry point for the world's most dangerous threat actors. Okay, let's really unpack this because
1:06
that is a monumental failure. Our mission for this deep dive is to analyze the systemic failures both architectural
1:13
and you know in transparency across the four big ones the dominant enterprise firewall vendors
1:18
fornet Cisco checkpoint and sonic wall and understand how their collective
1:24
pervasive vulnerabilities enabled what the sources are calling the current ransomware catastrophe. This isn't
1:30
theoretical. No, not at all. This is a market failure with a staggering human and financial
1:35
cost. Right. And the scope of the problem is just it's undeniable. Lay it out for us.
1:40
Okay. So, if you look at Cy's known exploited vulnerabilities catalog, the KV list,
1:46
Mhm. this is the stuff attackers are actively using right now. Right. The stuff that really matters. These four vendors, just these four,
1:52
account for over 50 critical vulnerabilities between 2021 and 2025. 50 50 actively exploited bugs in the one
1:59
device we trusted the most. It represents a fundamental systemic flaw across the backbone of global enterprise
2:05
security and the financial side of this, the consequences there. The sources verify that this crisis
2:11
directly enabled criminal syndicates to extract over $500 million in verified
2:16
ransom payments, half a billion dollars. But when you talk about systemic failure, it's not just money. You have to talk about the
2:24
human impact. And that's where it gets really grim. Yeah. In 2024 alone, these exact
2:29
perimeter weaknesses contributed directly to incidents that resulted in 259 million Americans having their
2:35
healthcare data compromised. 259 million. That's that's nearly the entire US population.
2:41
It is all exposed due to these architectural weaknesses at the edge. When a single failure point can touch
2:47
almost every household in America through their healthcare data, you know you are way past a simple patching
2:52
issue. This isn't just a bug. No, the data confirms our reliance on the perimeter created this massive centralized target
2:59
that criminal groups and nation states just exploited for maximum efficiency. Before we jump into the details of who
3:05
failed and how, we really need to thank the sponsors who make this kind of deep dive possible. The insights we're about
3:11
to get into require current expert knowledge. So, if your organization is looking to manage these complex vendor
3:17
ecosystems or maybe you require emergency vulnerability assessments or you need help transitioning away from
3:23
this failed perimeter model, you need transparent solutions. You need vetted expertise. You really do.
3:28
We encourage you to visit www.csomoarketplace.com. They connect you with the security
3:34
leaders and resources you need to navigate this frankly chaotic landscape.
3:39
H okay let's start with the vendor that according to the data really bears the heaviest quantitative burden of this
3:46
crisis fortnet why do our sources establish Fortnet as having and I'm quoting here the worst record
3:52
it really boils down to two things volume and targeting foret has the uh
3:59
dubious distinction of having 20 vulnerabilities on that CISA cami catalog 20 that's almost half of the total we
4:05
just mentioned for all four vendors exactly it's nearly double the count of some of their competitors. And this sheer volume makes Fortnet devices an
4:12
irresistible target for these high-v value ransomware operations, right? Especially because of where they're
4:18
deployed, critical sectors, critical sectors like healthcare. They are a volume target for volume
4:23
criminals. That brings us to the actors. The sources identify a threat group that's become almost synonymous with Fortnite
4:30
exploitation, Quillin. Who are they? What makes them such a successful specialist? Quillin, which is also
4:36
tracked as gold feather, operates with just ruthless efficiency. They have
4:42
specialized almost exclusively in exploiting Fortnet vulnerabilities to get that initial access.
4:47
And that specialization pays off hugely. The group generated over $50 million in documented ransom payments in
4:55
2024 alone. Oh, their success is rooted in scale and automation. They deploy these automated
5:00
tools that just scan the entire public internet looking for specific version numbers of fornet firmware and then they
5:07
rapidly compromise any vulnerable devices they find. And you mentioned their targeting. Why the intense focus on healthcare?
5:14
It's a cynical strategy, but it's highly effective economically. Healthcare organizations operate under what the
5:19
sources call life or death pressure. That pressure significantly shortens the time to payment for a ransom. When
5:25
patient lives are on the line, the decision to pay often comes a lot faster than in a you know a traditional
5:31
company. In just one month, June 2025, Quailin launched 81 attacks with the
5:38
heaviest concentration right on healthcare providers. Leveraging Forinet's flaws. Leveraging some of Foret's most critical
5:44
flaws. Let's get specific on those flaws. What kind of vulnerabilities are we talking about that give Quailin such complete
5:50
control? We're seeing flaws that lead to the most catastrophic outcome you can have, remote code execution or rce.
5:57
So they can run whatever they want on the firewall itself. Exactly. The sources specifically highlight CVE 2024 21own 62. It's an
6:06
out-of-bounds write vulnerability. Okay, explain that. What is an out-of- bounds write for our listeners? So an out-of- bounds write is a memory
6:13
corruption bug. It lets an attacker write data outside of the intended memory buffer. In practical terms, it
6:18
often means they can overwrite critical parts of the firewall's operating system, which gives them complete remote control over the device without needing
6:25
any credentials whatsoever. So, they don't just peek inside, they basically take the keys to the kingdom
6:30
and rewrite the rules of the house. That's a perfect way to put it. And when you combine that with flaws like CVE
6:37
2024 55591, which is a critical authentication bypass, they don't even
6:42
have to bother with a password. They just skip the login screen entirely and walk right into the network.
6:47
This technical failure, it had a horrifying realorld consequence that we
6:52
really need to highlight. The Senovus NHS attack in London. The Senovus incident back in June 2024
6:59
is the clearest illustration of the human cost of a firewall vulnerability. Quillin exploited a 4gate flaw to breach
7:06
and provides what services? They run pathology and blood transfusion services for major London hospitals. The
7:13
impact was immediate and it was catastrophic because doctors couldn't access blood type information or
7:18
pathology results. Services were just paralyzed. Paralyzed. Over 10,000 appointments, including
7:24
critical cancer screenings and surgeries, had to be canceled or postponed. So, we're talking about direct patient
7:29
harm directly traceable to a vulnerable firewall. It's undeniable. The disruption lasted
7:35
for weeks. It illustrates the analogy from the source material perfectly. What's the analogy? If Fortnite
7:40
firewalls are the hospital doors, Quin hasn't just manufactured a master key. They found the back door, walked in,
7:47
locked the doctors out, and then demanded payment before they'd let them resume life-saving procedures.
7:53
The vulnerability is one thing, a technical failure, but what about the vendor's response? The sources point to
8:00
Fortnite's systemic disclosure malpractice. And this failure of transparency is arguably just as damaging as the flaw
8:06
itself. Defenders rely on vendors to be honest and you know timely. Of course,
8:11
the sources detail this critical 40 web path traversal flaw CVE 2025 64446 that
8:18
was discovered in October 2025. Let's define path traversal for a moment because it's a concept that keeps coming
8:23
up across different vendors. Right? So a path traversal flaw, it essentially tricks a system into
8:29
stepping outside of its intended public web directory. Imagine a web server that's only supposed to show you files
8:34
in the public folder. A path traversal attack uses special characters like h to
8:41
navigate up the directory tree and access sensitive system files that were never meant to be seen by the internet.
8:47
Things like configuration files or password files. So a back door. And what did Fortnite do
8:53
when they found this critical back door? This is the problem. Fortnet silently patched the flaw on October 28th. They
9:00
fixed the lock, but they didn't tell anyone the lock had been picked. They didn't disclose it. They delayed
9:05
public disclosure in the CDE assignment for a full 17 days. 17 days.
9:10
During that critical period, attackers who had already discovered the zero day were actively exploiting it while
9:17
defenders were left completely in the dark. That is a massive gift to the attackers. It makes it impossible for a security
9:23
team to defend themselves. It creates this huge information asymmetry. Now, when researchers
9:28
criticized this, the vendor claimed that delaying disclosure was necessary to ensure the patch was distributed. But
9:34
the effect is clear. Attackers get a massive unearned head start. It feels like a betrayal of trust.
9:39
It is because it prioritizes the vendor's internal patching timeline over
9:45
the, you know, feduciary duty of the organizations using the product to protect patient or customer data.
9:51
And this problem just compounds when you look at the data leak crisis that followed this pattern. We have to talk
9:57
about the Bellson Group leak in January 2025. This leak confirms that the exploitation wasn't just about ransoming
10:03
one organization at a time. It was about highly sophisticated reconnaissance. The Bellson Group exploited an older
10:10
vulnerability CDE 2022 42475 not just to breach systems but to exfiltrate and
10:16
then leak configuration data for a staggering 15,000 fornet devices. 15,000 and configuration data. That's
10:24
where the long-term damage lies, isn't it? Why is that kind of data such a supply chain time bomb? because it
10:29
includes every blueprint an attacker needs for future targeted attacks. We're talking about administrative passwords,
10:35
often stored as easily recoverable hashes. We're talking about internal IP addresses, network maps, a full list of
10:40
firewall rules. So even if you patched the original bug, even if the organizations patch that specific forigate vulnerability that let
10:47
them in, if they didn't also rotate all those admin credentials and reset security tokens, the attackers now
10:53
possess a permanent master key. They have the road map to walk right back into those 15,000 organizations whenever
10:59
they want, bypassing the perimeter entirely by using what looks like legitimate access. So, the failure cascaded from flawed
11:06
code to vendor secrecy to identity compromise, and it creates an exponentially larger
11:11
risk across the entire supply chain. Let's connect this all directly back to the healthcare catastrophe. The connection is now clearly
11:17
quantified. The sources confirmed that in 2024, the healthcare sector reported 444 major cyber incidents. that far
11:24
exceeds any other critical infrastructure sector and the sheer volume of compromised patient records
11:30
259 million Americans that just highlights the critical mass reached by attacks like Quillins
11:36
and the ultimate cause what was the number one root cause of this mass exposure in 2025 unpatched systems including
11:43
these vulnerable Fortnet firewalls became the number one root cause of healthcare breaches they were used in
11:49
33% of all incidents a third of all incidents for years the leading cause was simple
11:54
stuff like credential theft. Now it's architectural failure at the perimeter.
12:00
This means the firewall, the supposed protector, is directly responsible for one out of every three major healthcare
12:07
breaches. That is a damning indictment. It forces every organization to just re-evaluate
12:12
their fundamental trust in these devices. Okay, let's move on to Cisco. Fortnet
12:18
represented the crisis of, you know, sheer volume and healthcare devastation. And Cisco seems to present a crisis of
12:24
ubiquity and value. That's a great way to put it. Cisco equipment is absolutely everywhere. It's
12:30
in virtually every major enterprise, every government agency, every piece of critical infrastructure globally,
12:36
which makes it the most valuable target. The most valuable target, attracting both the biggest financial criminals and the most persistent nation state actors.
12:43
The ubiquity factor means a single Cisco vulnerability becomes a global risk accelerator. And the financial games
12:48
just prove it. And the ransomware group specializing in CiscoVPNs is Akira, right? And their operation just
12:55
highlights the immediate payoff when you target the perimeter of these deep pocketed organizations. Akira is a massive operation. How
13:02
successful have they been by focusing on this one weak point? They've generated approximately $244.17
13:09
million in ransom payments by September 2025. Wow. They're one of the most financially
13:14
successful ransomware operations ever tracked. and their target sweet spot is highly strategic. It's midsize
13:20
enterprises, companies with say 50 to 500 million in revenue that deploy enterprisegrade Cisco gear but often
13:28
lack the sophisticated, you know, 2047 security staff needed to manage the constant patching cycle.
13:34
So, what are the key Cisco exploits they're weaponizing to scrape credentials and get in? Akira methodically targets Cisco's
13:40
adaptive security appliance, the ASA, and their Firepower threat defense or FTD vulnerabilities. Yeah,
13:46
they use flaws like CDE 2020 3D259 which is an older information disclosure vulnerability that it lets them scrape
13:52
config data and credentials and more recently more recently they've been leveraging CDE 202269
13:58
a critical authentication bypass what's fascinating here though is the methodology the sources stress that
14:05
Akira doesn't just rely on the technical flaw they rely just as heavily on identity failure
14:11
that is the crucial distinction perimeter defense failure and identity failure are merging into one problem.
14:17
The sources noted that 60% of all cyber incidents in 2024 involved identity
14:23
based attacks. 60%. So, Akira often combines exploiting an unpatched CVE to get a foothold with
14:30
abusing weak identity controls. And the main one is just a total lack of multiffactor authentication or MFA on
14:37
critical VPN accounts. And they use more sophisticated techniques too, right? Like MFA fatigue. Absolutely. So, they get valid
14:43
credentials through scraping. That's step one. If that account has MFA, they launch these MFA fatigue attacks where
14:49
they just spam a user's phone with push notifications, usually in the middle of the night. The hope being the user just gives in.
14:54
The hope is that the user, annoyed or exhausted, will just hit approve to make the buzzing stop and in doing so
15:00
unknowingly hand the session over to the attacker. It's a targeted psychological attack built on the assumption that the
15:07
user is the weakest link. And this precise vulnerability chain, the Cisco flaw plus weak identity led to one of
15:14
the most heartbreaking consequences detailed in our sources. The destruction of K&P logistics.
15:19
The K&P logistics anecdote serves as the ultimate warning. This was 158-year-old
15:24
UK transportation company. A pillar of the community employed 730 people. And then the attack vector.
15:30
It was astonishingly simple and devastating. A cure exploited a weak password on a CiscoVPN account that
15:37
critically completely lacked MFA. A single weak credential on one unmanaged device wiped out a business
15:44
that had survived two world wars. That is the tragic reality. The ransomware infection paralyzed their
15:50
operational and financial systems. Invoicing, payroll, logistics, everything just stopped. The company
15:55
couldn't recover. Was forced into administration bankruptcy basically. And all 730 jobs were immediately lost. It's
16:01
just it's the ultimate example of catastrophic risk. One tiny security failure at the perimeter leads to
16:07
complete business extinction. Exactly. So K&P illustrates the ransomware threat. But Cisco's ubiquity also
16:15
attract the nation's state actors, the ones interested in long-term stealthy espionage. Enter Arcan Door. Arcandoor,
16:22
which is linked to a Chinese AP group known as UAT4356 or Storm 1849, represents a new, frankly
16:30
terrifying level of architectural persistence. They targeted Cisco infrastructure for long-term
16:35
intelligence gathering, not cash. And the core issue they introduced was a malware called lineunner.
16:40
Lerunner, what is it and why did it fundamentally change the security equation for government agencies?
16:46
Linerunner is a Lua based implant that Arcane Door installed directly onto Cisco ASA devices. The ingenuity and the
16:53
horror of this implant is that it was engineered to survive not just reboots but critically firmware upgrades.
16:59
So patching doesn't work. Patching was useless. Historically, if you patch a device, you kill the malware. Line Runner persisted. This
17:06
forced government agencies to confront a staggering problem. They had to physically decommission and replace the
17:12
compromised hardware. The implant was buried so deep in the devices operating memory.
17:18
Wow. That turns a simple patch into an entire hardware replacement project. The cost must be astronomical.
17:24
It shifts the remediation cost from software maintenance to capital expenditure, which is exponentially
17:30
higher. It shows that these sophisticated actors are now designing malware that anticipates and defeats
17:36
traditional remediation. And this problem is pervasive. Even highly sensitive government organizations are failing to manage this
17:42
risk. The US Congressional Budget Office, the CBO, was breached during the 2025 government shutdown and the attack
17:49
vector was just unpatched Cisco firewalls. It shows that even with explicit SISA directives mandating
17:55
patching, the organizational failure to follow through is widespread. So if we step back, Cisco's devices are
18:01
the front door and we have two very different groups using them. That's a perfect way to look at it. If Cisco VPNs are the front doors, Akira is
18:08
using either exploited zero days or stolen keys like weak credentials to walk in and hold everyone for ransom.
18:15
Okay, but LRunner is the next evolution. It's like the intruder didn't just break in.
18:21
They installed a permanent unreovable hidden camera and recording device inside the wall that survives every
18:27
attempt you make to change the lock or upgrade the security system. You have to rip the wall out and build a new one. The lesson here is just so clear. The
18:34
most common door is also the most scrutinized and the urgency of this crisis highlights the incredible demand
18:40
for skilled experts who can implement things like zero trust and enforce the necessary identity
18:45
counter measures. Absolutely. If you're a professional in this space looking to advance your career or find resources to help you
18:52
tackle these exact challenges, we'd highly recommend checking out www.securitycareers.help.
18:58
They are dedicated to supporting the next generation of leadership capable of solving these complex persistent
19:03
problems. Okay, we've covered Fortnet and Cisco volume and ubiquity. Now, let's turn to
19:10
the next major player, Checkpoint, which presents what the sources call the zeroday paradox. This is an irony so
19:17
thick you could cut it with a knife. It really is. Checkpoint is a giant insecurity. They're famous for publishing industry threat intelligence.
19:24
They are the ones telling the world about the surge in cyber attacks. In fact, they noted a 47% surge in weekly
19:30
global attacks in Q1 2025. And the irony. Yet, while they were detailing this global onslaught, their own products
19:36
were being actively exploited by the very threats they were tracking. So, let's detail the flaw here. CVE 20242491
19:43
time. This was a zeroday path traversal flaw that was exploited at what warp speed.
19:48
The timeline is what terrifies defenders. The vulnerability was disclosed in May 2024. CISA added it to
19:56
the KV catalog just 3 days later because mass exploitation began within 24 hours
20:01
of the proof of concept code being published online. 24 hours. Attackers didn't wait. They immediately
20:07
weaponized the PAC and started harvesting data before most security teams had even finished reading the
20:12
initial vendor advisory. In Checkpoint initially, they downplayed the severity, right, which created a
20:18
dangerous perception gap for their customers. That's right. Checkpoint initially minimized the flaw. They said it only
20:23
allowed access to certain information on the gateway device. That kind of terminology suggests a limited impact.
20:29
But that wasn't the reality. No. Security researchers immediately dissected the patch, reverse engineer
20:35
the vulnerability, and discover the terrifying reality. The path traversal flaw allowed an unauthenticated attacker
20:41
to read any file on the system with system level privileges. Any file. And what was the attacker's
20:47
primary target on these internetf facing gateways? The target was the crown jewel of any Windows network,
20:54
the Active Directory database file known as NTDS.de which holds all the password hashes for
21:00
the entire network. Everything all the user and group password hashes needed to log into the
21:06
entire network. Attackers were observed dumping the entire Active Directory database within 2 to three hours of
21:13
their initial access through these vulnerable checkpoint gateways. So full domain compromise in under three hours
21:19
all through the firewall. The thing that was supposed to protect Active Directory became the front door to stealing it.
21:24
Precisely. If Fortnet's failure was the volume of keys they lost, Checkpoint's failure was the speed at which the
21:31
single most important master key was stolen right after they warned the world about a spike in attacks.
21:36
The irony is, yeah, it's thick. And that's just the first half of Checkpoints crisis. The sources talk about a double irony,
21:42
right? So following that May zero day, their own infrastructure was breached. In December 2024, their partner portal
21:49
was compromised. This second breach was exposed publicly in March 2025 by a
21:54
threat actor named Corey injection, who then leaked data from over 121,000
22:00
accounts. Wow. So the failure isn't just in the products code, but in the vendor's ability to secure their own systems,
22:06
which holds critical data about their own customer base. It's deeply alarming. Okay, let's shift focus to the last of
22:12
the big four, Sonic Wall, which illustrates a different dimension of this problem, the third party risk
22:17
multiplier, especially in the mid-market. Sonic Wall is widely deployed across SMBs and mid-market companies, making it
22:23
a persistent and profitable target. They've accumulated 14 CDEs on the CISV
22:28
list, so they're consistently targeted. And when a flaw exists in a product used by thousands of vendors, the risk just
22:34
cascades. It cascades. And the prime example of this cascade effect is the Marquee software breach in August of 2025.
22:41
Tell us about the ripple effect from that one firewall failure. So Marquee Software Solutions is a
22:46
financial tech vendor. Attackers exploited a suspected Sonic Wall firewall vulnerability likely CVE
22:52
2024766 at Marquee. Now Marqu didn't just manage
22:58
their own data. They manage data for dozens of financial institutions, banks, credit unions
23:04
who outsourced services to them. Exactly. Things like customer relationship management, compliance reporting. They were a trusted third
23:10
party. So, one weak firewall at one vendor exposed their entire customer ecosystem.
23:16
What was the magnitude of that fallout? That single point of failure compromised the data of nearly 788,000 customers.
23:23
Wow. Across over 74 different financial institutions. The banks themselves weren't directly breached, but their
23:29
customer data was exposed because their trusted vendor had a vulnerable perimeter device. This is the supply
23:34
chain risk multiplier in action. Your security is only as strong as your weakest vendor's firewall.
23:39
This realization that the perimeter is porous and the supply chain is the new target. It brings us to what the sources
23:45
call a SAS nightmare trifecta. How are attackers bypassing these firewalls altogether? Now,
23:51
the sources confirm a clear shift in tactics. Attackers realize it's often easier to just bypass the physical
23:57
perimeter by targeting third party software as a service or SAW vendors.
24:02
And what they steal are Oath tokens, which are the modern equivalent of a key card for cloud services.
24:07
Precisely. But how does stealing an Oath token grant lateral movement if my firewall is
24:13
still active? Because the oath token grants legitimate authenticated access to your cloud
24:19
environment, your Salesforce, your AWS, your GitHub. If an attacker compromises
24:24
a vendor and steals their token, they use that token to pivot directly into your cloud environment as what looks
24:30
like a legitimate user. So, they never even touch the customer side firewall. They don't have to. It's completely
24:36
irrelevant to the attack. They walk in through the authorized cloud side door. And the scale of this oath token carnage
24:42
is terrifyingly vast, especially when you look at the August 2025 sales loft
24:47
drift breach. That incident was a huge wakeup call. Attackers use stolen oath tokens from marketing and sales platforms like sales
24:53
loft and drift. Using those tokens, they compromised over 700 downstream companies.
24:58
700 including major security players. PaloAlto Networks, Zcaler, Tenible. The
25:04
threat actor demonstrated that to breach 700 companies, you don't need to exploit 700 firewalls. You just need to
25:11
compromise the one vendor that holds the master keys, the tokens to those 700 Salesforce and cloud environments. This
25:18
confluence of factors, rapid exploitation, vendor downplaying, the cascading supply chain risk. I mean,
25:24
threat intelligence is now a matter of urgency, not just curiosity, right? Organizations need current, transparent
25:30
data to track these failures in real time. If you're tracking incidents like core injection or the marquee breach or
25:35
just trying to stay ahead of rapid POS exploitation, you need more than delayed vendor advisories. Yes, absolutely. Do
25:41
we recommend visiting www.bached.com breached.comcomp for comprehensive and transparent threat intelligence that
25:47
gives you the context and the urgency you need. Okay, we have spent a lot of time detailing these systemic failures.
25:53
Fortnet's volume of rce flaws, Cisco's identity failures, checkpoint speed of compromise, Sonic Wall supply chain
26:00
multiplier, four vendors, over 50 exploited CVEes, half a billion in
26:05
ransoms. The sources lead to one central unavoidable conclusion that has to be the guiding principle for every security
26:12
decision from now on. The central finding is definitive. The network perimeter is dead and firewall vendors
26:18
killed it. And this isn't just a moment for reflection. It mandates an immediate, comprehensive, and often
26:24
difficult shift in security architecture away from the perimeter toward a model where nothing is implicitly trusted regardless of where
26:31
it originates. So for the listener, the security professional, the CISO, the executive, the immediate question is what do we do
26:38
today? Based on this failure data, what is the CISO's immediate manifesto?
26:43
There are four non-negotiable tactical actions that need to happen within the next 48 hours. Okay, what's number one?
26:49
First, audit urgency. Every organization has to immediately audit all internetf
26:54
facing firewalls against the CELK list. Specifically, check for the Fordet bypasses and the checkpoint path
27:01
traversal flop. If any system is vulnerable, you must operate under the assumption of compromise and start
27:06
incident response. Assume you're already breached. Assume the attackers are already in. Second, based on the Cisco credential
27:14
scraping and the Bilson group leak is credential rotation, right? You must rotate all administrative
27:19
credentials for firewalls and VPNs, regardless of patching status. The credentials for thousands of devices are
27:26
already out there on criminal forums. If you don't rotate them, you've invited them to use the keys they already stole.
27:32
The destruction of KMP logistics underscores the next point which is just basic identity security.
27:37
Absolutely. Third is mandatory MFA. The lack of multiffactor authentication destroyed KMP logistics. You must
27:44
implement fishing resistant MFA 502 or web often is the gold standard on all
27:49
VPNs and all administrative interfaces. No exceptions. No exceptions. If your CISO is still debating the business case for MFA, show
27:56
them the K&P logistics case study. 730 jobs lost over a single week password.
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The cost of inaction is just too high. And the fourth step and finally fourth is isolation. Disable
28:08
all internetf facing management interfaces on these critical appliances. These interfaces are the front door for
28:14
zeroday exploitation. Administration must be forced through an isolated authenticated jump box or a separate
28:21
segmented management network. If the interface isn't on the public internet, the attacker can't easily exploit it.
28:27
So these four steps are triage. They're stopping the bleeding. But the long-term solution requires a complete
28:33
architectural pivot to the zero trust framework. How do we move from perimeter
28:38
trust to this new model? Zero trust is the necessary paradigm shift. It formalizes the principle of
28:44
never trust always verify. The fundamental assumption changes from trust anything inside the network to
28:50
trust nothing regardless of its location. This means eliminating implicit trust for all traffic, even
28:55
east west traffic between your own internal servers. What are the central components of implementing zero trust that directly address the failures we've
29:02
talked about? It's defined by two key concepts. First is micro segmentation. If an attacker
29:08
compromises a Cisco VPN like Aira does, they must not get immediate unfettered
29:13
lateral movement across the network. Right? Micro segmentation divides the network into tiny isolated segments often down
29:20
to the individual server level. An attacker who breaches a finance segment is confined only to that segment. They
29:26
can't pivot directly to Active Directory without continuous reverification. So instead of one giant fortress wall,
29:34
you have thousands of tiny internal reinforced cells and you need a new key for each one.
29:39
Precisely. And the second crucial component is establishing identity as the perimeter. You stop relying on the
29:45
physical firewall appliance to protect things. Instead, you use the combination of a user's verified identity and their
29:51
devices security health to grant access. This is identitycentric security. So you're constantly checking who the user
29:57
is and what device they're on. If the user is continuously authenticated, the device is verified as compliant and the application access is
30:04
specifically authorized, then and only then do they get access. The physical
30:09
network boundary becomes architecturally irrelevant. This directly addresses the Cisco Aura problem where identity
30:16
failure led to massive breaches. This shift demands constant vigilance, especially since we've seen the vendor
30:22
breach timeline is just impossibly compressed. 24 hours to exploitation, 17 days of vendor silence. If we can't rely
30:30
on vendors to protect us or even warn us, what does this mean for vendor risk management?
30:35
It demands a complete overhaul of the whole process. Organizations have to move past those old superficial
30:41
questionnaire checklists. Given the scale of the Sonic Wall marquee failure, you have to enforce strict contractual
30:47
compliance and verification, meaning you have to assume your vendor is a target and that their breach will become your
30:52
problem. You have to require clear evidence of their patching status against the CISAV list and demand the
30:59
contractual right to audit their security posture. The fact that groups like the Bellson group are stealing
31:05
Fortnite config files to use later proves that this is a long-term systemic risk. This deep dive has detailed a
31:12
security crisis rooted in the failure of the very products intended to prevent it. We've seen the devastating human
31:18
cost at Sovous NHS and KMP logistics and the massive financial and data loss
31:23
across the board. Which brings us back to the most provocative question raised by the source material. It's one that every
31:29
board of directors and executive leadership team should be asking right now. And what's that question? When a
31:34
firewall vendor has 20 actively exploited catastrophic CVEes on CES's KV
31:40
catalog, at what point does continuing to deploy their products cease being a calculated riskmanagement decision and
31:46
become pure demonstrable negligence? It's a question of fiduciary duty to shareholders and to basic patient or
31:54
customer safety. This moves from a technical debate to a governance problem and that is where the most critical
32:00
decisions have to be made. Now, that question really brings us to the end of today's deep dive. The core
32:05
takeaway from our analysis of Fortnet, Cisco, Checkpoint, and Sonic Wall is that the firewall crisis is far beyond a
32:12
simple patching issue. It's a fundamental architectural failure, and it demands immediate
32:18
decisive investment in zero trust and identitycentric security. The status quo is just demonstrabably
32:24
untenable. Continuing to rely on the traditional perimeter model is to willfully accept that your organization
32:30
is just a waiting target for sophisticated financial actors like Akira or hyper persistent nation states
32:36
using tools like LineRunner exploiting flaws inherent in the very appliances you paid top dollar to
32:41
protect you. Exactly. Before we sign off, one last shout out to our sponsors. If your organization
32:47
needs immediate help transitioning to a functional zero trust architecture or requires emergency vulnerability
32:54
assessments based on these critical KV findings or just needs help developing
32:59
an effective incident response plan, you need to connect with industry experts today. Visit www.seomarketplace.com.
33:08
You know, the closing analogy provided in our source material summarizes the state of perimeter security perfectly.
33:13
It's one you should keep in mind. What is it? Relying on these insecure firewalls is effectively like installing
33:19
a high-tech armored steel door only to discover that the lock manufacturer accidentally mailed the master key and a
33:26
full set of blueprints to every criminal in the city. And as we've seen with Arcane Door and Lineer Runner, sometimes they also mail
33:32
a permanent hidden camera that survives every single lock change. Thank you for joining us on the deep dive. We'll see
33:38
you next time.

