CISA Orders Feds to Patch Dell’s Latest Shitshow – ‘Three Days’ My Arse
Oh brilliant. Just fucking brilliant. CISA’s gone and added another Dell clusterfuck to their Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog, and this time it’s CVE-2024-39596, an authentication bypass that scores a rather uncomfortable 8.4 on the CVSS scale. Translation: any remote shithead with a keyboard can waltz right into your Apex Guardian or PowerProtect appliances like they own the goddamn place.
The headline screams “THREE DAYS” in big shouty letters, but if you actually read the fucking directive, the deadline is March 13th – which, for those of us who can operate a calendar, is roughly THREE WEEKS from when this bullshit was announced. Nothing says “critical security emergency” like giving everyone time to schedule a proper fucking lunch break first. I swear, the person who writes these headlines is the same bastard who puts “SALE” signs on shit that was marked up 200% yesterday.
Dell, being the helpful cunts they are, released patches back in January and February. Because why bother coordinating disclosure when you can just dump the fix into the void and hope some poor sod notices? Spoiler alert: they didn’t. The flaw’s been actively exploited in the wild, which means some enterprising shitweasel has been having a field day while federal agencies were presumably busy rebooting their Windows XP machines because “it ran fine yesterday.”
If you’ve got Dell Apex Guardian, PowerProtect Data Domain, DP series, or DD series appliances, congratulations – your “data protection” solution is about as protective as a paper condom in a hurricane. Better start filling out those change request forms in triplicate, because we all know it’ll take you two weeks just to convince management that patching isn’t “disruptive to business operations” while the Russian mob is already downloading your entire HR database.
The real kick in the teeth? Even with three weeks, most government IT shops will spend the first two in committee meetings arguing whether this is really a “priority,” the third week in change control hell, and then miss the deadline because “someone forgot to submit the firewall exception request.” By which point the hostile nation-state of your choice will have your personnel files, procurement records, and that folder of embarrassing office Christmas party photos marked “DEFINITELY NOT FOR SHARING.”
Related anecdote: Some manager from the Department of Administrative Affairs rang me yesterday, absolutely livid that I forced the patch on his precious PowerProtect appliance. Seems his “mission-critical” backup scripts – written in fucking Perl by someone who clearly hated humanity – started barfing errors everywhere. I told him the errors were the sound of his data no longer being auctioned on the dark web for the price of a Happy Meal. He asked if we could roll it back. I laughed. Then I sent his boss an email explaining how he personally blocked a mandated security fix. He’s “taking a personal day.” I’m still laughing.
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