(CNN) Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Thursday that he's "extraordinarily concerned" about a newly revealed critical flaw in widely used software that is roiling the internet and caused the US Patent and Trademark Office to temporarily shut down external access to its computer systems. "It's uppermost in our minds, and, quite frankly, uppermost in our action plans," Mayorkas said, speaking with the German Marshall Fund of the United States about ransomware. He continued: "The challenge it presents is its prevalence, because they attacked a software that is omnipresent, and then there's a vulnerability that has been exposed and others can jump in in the exploitation of that vulnerability and really multiply the harm." The secretary added that the government is working "very, very quickly" on the issue. CNN reported earlier Thursday that the US Patent and Trademark Office on Wednesday night shut down external access to its computer systems for 12 hours in response to the flaw in Java-based software known as Log4j.

Source: CNN December 17, 2021 14:41 UTC