Pakistan’s government agencies and military institutions are facing an urgent cyber-security crisis following the discovery of a critical vulnerability in widely-used enterprise software. The National Cyber Emergency Response Team (National CERT) has issued a stark warning to public-sector organisations and defence bodies: failure to act swiftly could allow attackers unfettered access to sensitive systems and data.
Critical Flaw Exposes Government & Military Systems
The vulnerability in question affects Oracle E‑Business Suite (EBS), a software platform widely deployed across government finance, human-resources and supply-chain systems. The flaw (listed as CVE‑2025‑61882) carries a severity score of 9.8 and allows an attacker to gain full system control without needing a password.
According to the alert, hackers are already exploiting the vulnerability in real-world attacks, targeting exposed systems reachable via HTTP/HTTPS. Public-sector entities whose EBS installations lack patching, segmentation or multifactor authentication are considered particularly vulnerable.
Wider Implications for National Security
The advisory emphasises that the risk is elevated for military or hybrid-infrastructure systems, which typically connect across departmental networks and may share services with government civilian systems. The scale and sensitivity of operations performed by EBS in government contexts—financial controls, procurement, HR—make such a breach potentially catastrophic.
Separately, research on Pakistan’s cyber-security readiness highlights the overall fragility of its digital defence environment: limited implementation of policy, weak inter-agency coordination and insufficient skilled manpower remain major gaps.
Recommended Mitigations & Immediate Actions
The National CERT advisory lays out concrete steps for organisations to reduce risk:
- Apply Oracle’s latest security patches without delay.
- Place EBS systems behind firewalls or secure gateways; block public access to administrative interfaces.
- Enable multi-factor authentication for privileged access and change all administrator passwords.
- Monitor system logs for unusual data transfers or attempts to bypass authentication.
- Ensure offline backups and readiness of incident-response capabilities, including forensic preservation in case of intrusion.
Why the Risk Is Elevated Now
This incident underscores a broader shift in threat dynamics: state and non-state actors increasingly view cyber-space as a domain of strategic competition, and government systems—particularly defence or critical infrastructure—are high-value targets.
In Pakistan’s context, the adoption of digital services across ministries and defence establishments has accelerated, but security implementations have not kept pace. The result: a large attack surface with potentially critical consequences.
Unless remedial measures are implemented urgently, any breach of EBS in a government or military context could trigger data theft, system disruption or extortion campaigns. For Pakistan, the implications stretch beyond technical damage—breaches could undermine public trust in institutions, expose national defence logistics, and compromise strategic systems.
The alarm from National CERT is not just timely—it is a call-to-action for all major federal, provincial and defence-connected entities to reassess their cyber defences now.
