The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is urging manufacturers to get rid of default passwords on internet-exposed systems altogether, citing severe risks that could be exploited by malicious actors to gain initial access to, and move laterally within, organizations.
In an alert published last week, the agency called out Iranian threat actors affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) for exploiting operational technology devices with default passwords to gain access to critical infrastructure systems in the U.S.
Default passwords refer to factory default software configurations for embedded systems, devices, and appliances that are typically publicly documented and identical among all systems within a vendor’s product line.
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