Tenable®, the Exposure Management company, announced the creation of its new Tenable Research Alliance Program to share vulnerability information prior to public disclosure. The goal of this new intelligence sharing initiative is to shorten the window of opportunity for threat actors to exploit newly disclosed vulnerabilities, allowing security teams and system administrators to address attack paths before hackers can exploit them. The five founding members of this growing network are AlmaLinux, Canonical, CIQ, GreyNoise, and TuxCare [the new brand name for CloudLinux Enterprise services].
Organizations are in a race against cyber attackers when a new vulnerability is disclosed. Those in charge of securing the organization must work to determine whether the flaw exists within their infrastructure, assess the risk it poses by identifying the attack paths it introduces, and prioritize the weaknesses that pose the greatest threat before either updating the software where a patch is available or taking mitigating action if this is not immediately feasible. This takes time and exposes the organization. Threat actors will be looking for the vulnerability and devising ways to weaponize it at the same time.
Establishing a framework for a network of technology partners to share vulnerability details in accordance with CVD best practices increases the likelihood that software scripts (plugins) that detect instances of the flaw can be developed, tested, and deployed in time for public disclosure announcements. This allows organizations to assess and remediate their environments from the beginning. This means that those in charge of vulnerability management are not only equipped with the same intelligence as threat actors, but are also prepared to take action to find and fix flaws before an attacker can exploit them.
“Whenever a vulnerability is disclosed the dinner bell sounds for good and bad actors alike, meaning organizations are already on their back foot,” explains Robert Huber, chief security officer and head of research, Tenable.
“We know threat actors are monitoring disclosure programs in the same way we are, looking for newly announced vulnerabilities, studying all available information such as proof of concepts, but they’re looking to utilize the flaw. By giving our customers the tools to address these weaknesses when they’re publicly announced, we reduce that intelligence gap and hand the advantage back to the good guys.”
“Our customers want to make sure they can continue using Nessus to detect outdated packages on AlmaLinux OS Systems. Joining the Tenable Research Alliance provides an excellent way for Tenable and AlmaLinux to work together to make it possible,” said Jack Aboutboul, community manager for AlmaLinux. “Security is a key component of building resilient internet infrastructure, and this step helps strengthen AlmaLinux as the CentOS alternative of choice.”
“Ubuntu enables secure open source consumption across the whole enterprise compute spectrum,” said Lech Sandecki, Ubuntu product manager, Canonical. “As the publisher of Ubuntu, Canonical is proud to join the Tenable Research Alliance Program, continuing our collaboration in order to make open source security even more actionable, timely and accurate.”
“CIQ, the founding sponsor and partner of Rocky Linux, is excited to demonstrate our commitment to open source security by joining Tenable’s Research Alliance Program,” said Gregory Kurtzer, CEO of CIQ and founder of Rocky Linux, Apptainer/Singularity, and Warewulf. “We look forward to working with Tenable and the Rocky Linux open source community to create a more secure software supply chain.”
“We are excited to partner with Tenable in the Research Alliance Partnership,” said Nate Thai, director of research, GreyNoise. “The combination of Tenable vulnerability data, with the real-time mass exploit awareness that GreyNoise provides, will help our mutual customers, as well as industry partners, respond faster and more accurately to newly-emerging vulnerabilities.”
“At TuxCare, we live patch a large number of vulnerabilities for the Linux kernel without rebooting. We have joined the Tenable Research Alliance to more closely collaborate with the Nessus team to correctly diagnose which vulnerabilities have been live patched, and which are yet to be patched,” said Igor Seletskiy, CEO and Founder of TuxCare. “This will directly benefit Linux administrators, strengthening their access to actionable information, and building a stronger security infrastructure.”
For more information about the program, and how to become a member, email rap@tenable.com.
