SINGAPORE - The Republic's national cyber-security watchdog on Friday (Dec 17) raised the alert level on t
he highly critical Log4j software security flaw that has been declared code red by experts and governments globally.
Hackers are rushing to exploit the bug in the widely used software that cyber-security experts called one of the worst in years.
The Cyber Security Agency of Singapore (CSA) said that it has held two emergency meetings this week with all government agencies overseeing the country's 11 critical information infrastructure (CII) sectors, including telecommunications, transport, as well as banking and finance.
The affected free and open source Apache Log4j software is popularly used for logging and keeping track of changes in many applications, ranging from social media and gaming to online shopping and banking.
The flaw is so serious that it could let hackers easily take full control of computer systems, allowing them to steal and delete data, lock up digital files with ransomware until the crooks are paid, make fraudulent bank transfers and more.
The bug is also so easy to exploit that just adding a line of code is enough, something experts said amateur cyber criminals could pull off.