Stay secure with our latest firewall updates, trends, and expert insights in information security to protect your digital assets effectively.
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Background for this topic.
Firewalls are security controls that permit or block network connections according to policy. They can operate at network boundaries, between internal segments, on individual hosts, or in cloud environments. Basic rules use addresses, ports, protocols, and connection state; more advanced firewalls may inspect applications or encrypted traffic where configured. Their purpose is to limit which systems can communicate, not to determine that all permitted traffic is safe.
Security depends heavily on accurate policy and maintenance. Overly broad, obsolete, or conflicting rules can expose services or allow unnecessary lateral movement, while unmanaged administrative interfaces and unpatched firewall software create additional attack surfaces. Practitioners should restrict management access, apply least-privilege rules, review and remove exceptions, and monitor logs for unexpected connections and policy changes. Firewall logs can support investigation, but encryption, evasion, and traffic allowed by policy may limit what the control can detect.
Palo Alto Networks has observed exploit attempts chaining three vulnerabilities in its PAN-OS firewall appliances
The authentication bypass vulnerability in the OS for the company's firewall devices is under increasing attack and being chained with other bugs, making it imperative for organizations to mitigate the issue ASAP.
Palo Alto Networks warns that hackers are actively exploiting a critical authentication bypass flaw (CVE-2025-0108) in PAN-OS firewalls, chaining it with two other vulnerabilities to breach devices in active attacks. [...]
If you want to avoid urgent patches, stop exposing management consoles to the public internet A flaw patched last week by Palo Alto Networks is now under active attack and, when chained with two older vulnerabilities, allows attackers to gain root access to affected systems.…
Surge in Attack Attempts Spotted After Palo Alto Networks Details and Patches FlawAttackers have stepped up efforts to exploit a vulnerability in the software that runs Palo Alto Networks firewall appliances that could give them direct access to the underlying software. Unauthenticated hackers could use PHP scripts to bypass the PAN-OS management web interface.
Vulnerabilities in firewalls from Palo Alto Networks and SonicWall are currently under active exploitation