CISA Directs Federal Agencies to Patch Actively Exploited Citrix NetScaler RCE Flaw

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has ordered U.S. government agencies to patch Citrix NetScaler appliances against a remote code execution vulnerability that is actively being exploited in the wild. The directive, communicated through CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, sets a remediation deadline of this Saturday for federal systems.

The vulnerability affects Citrix NetScaler appliances and is reported to be under active attack. CISA added the flaw to its KEV catalog, which mandates that federal civilian executive branch agencies patch the vulnerability by the specified deadline to reduce risk to government networks.

BleepingComputer reported on the directive, noting that the vulnerability is being actively exploited by threat actors. The agency's order underscores the severity of the issue, given that the flaw allows remote code execution on NetScaler appliances if left unpatched.

Affected organizations are advised to apply the security update provided by Citrix to address the vulnerability before the Saturday deadline. The directive is part of CISA's broader effort to protect federal systems from known exploited vulnerabilities that pose significant risk to national cybersecurity posture.