A newly discovered vulnerability in the Apache Struts 2 software has forced the Canadian government to close down the Statistics Canada site used for filing federal taxes, Reuters reports. The site came under attack from hackers but was immediately shut down before any damage could be done.
The security bug in Apache Struts 2 software, used mostly in websites of government, banks, and retailers, was reported last week after the Apache Software Foundation came out with an update to fix the vulnerability. Users of this software around the world spent the weekend patching up this bug which reportedly was being exploited in the wild.
Canadian government official John Glowacki said that other countries "are actually having greater problems with this specific vulnerability.”
“This vulnerability is super easy to exploit," says Chris Wysopal of security software firm Veracode. "You just point it to the web server and put in the command that you want to run."
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