DIVD helps aid organizations and charities
National and international aid organizations are vulnerable to attacks by cybercriminals. The hackers of the Dutch Institute for Vulnerability Disclosure have informed thousands of charities in recent months about vulnerabilities in their online systems.
DIVD has scanned the online environments of more than 35,000 foundations and charities worldwide for known vulnerabilities. Volunteers from DIVD then notified the IT departments of these organizations about these vulnerabilities so that they could take action to resolve the vulnerabilities.
The reason for this action is the November 2021 hack on the International Red Cross in which data of 515,000 people worldwide was leaked. The attackers exploited a known vulnerability CVE-2021-405439 for which a patch was available for a long time. This once again demonstrates the importance of timely updates.
DIVD calls on the aid organizations that have received an e-mail from them to patch the systems as quickly as possible. The e-mail clearly states which vulnerability is involved. If the organizations encounter problems with patching, they can always contact DIVD.
DIVD researcher Tom Wolters is in charge of this case from DIVD: “In these times it is important that we strengthen our systems worldwide and are less vulnerable. Charities and foundations work hard to make the world a better place, let’s help them where we can; detect vulnerabilities and close gaps.”
The researchers will continue to scan the environments. Aid organizations can therefore expect another e-mail with additional information.
About DIVD
The Dutch Institute for Vulnerability Disclosure scans the entire internet for vulnerabilities and reports them to those who can fix them: free of charge and unsolicited. We are the Red Cross of the Internet. Read more about our work on our website DIVD.nl.
Last modified: 23 Nov 2022 21:17