In February 2021, software program big Ivanti found that Chinese language hackers had breached the community of Pulse Safe, one among its subsidiaries that supplied VPN home equipment to dozens of firms and authorities companies world wide, in response to new reporting by Bloomberg.
The hackers exploited a secret backdoor they’d planted in Pulse Safe’s VPN software program, Bloomberg reported, citing Ivanti’s chief security officer on the time and different sources. The backdoor allowed the hackers to realize entry to 119 different unnamed organizations that used the corporate’s similar VPN product.
Mandiant was reportedly conscious of the breaches as nicely, alerting Ivanti that hackers had exploited the bug to breach European and U.S. navy contractors.
The beforehand unreported breach is the newest instance of how acquisitions, layoffs, and cost-cutting pushed by personal fairness corporations helped to compromise the standard and security of Ivanti’s most important applied sciences. After personal funding big Clearlake Capital Group acquired Ivanti in 2017, Bloomberg reported rounds of cuts — significantly in 2022 — affecting staff who had deep institutional data of the corporate’s merchandise and their security.
Ivanti and Mandiant didn’t reply to a request for remark.
Bloomberg’s findings echo earlier reporting into rival supplier of distant entry instruments, Citrix, which had giant scale layoffs following a 2022 deal by Elliott Funding Administration and Vista Fairness Companions to purchase the corporate. Like Ivanti, Citrix has been mired by cybersecurity incidents and demanding flaws lately.
Ivanti’s VPN merchandise have been the reason for at the very least two different main assaults since.
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June 9, 2026
In early 2024, U.S. cybersecurity company CISA ordered all federal companies to disconnect their Ivanti VPN home equipment inside two days as a result of hackers had been actively exploiting vulnerabilities that had been unknown to Ivanti on the time. Ivanti additionally warned clients final 12 months that hackers had been exploiting one other crucial flaw in its Join Safe product to hack company clients.
