The Log4shell vulnerability has been called the biggest exploit found in the past decade. With almost every Java application being vulnerable to it, threat actors have leveraged it to exploit millions of devices. The flaw was discovered by Chinese Alibaba Cloud Security Team engineer Chen Zhoujun in late November 2021. They then immediately notified the Apache Software Foundation, the team behind Log4j, via email and were able to patch the vulnerability before it was publicly exposed. This week the Chinese government took action against Alibaba Cloud, Zhoujun’s team who assisted in the responsible disclosure of Log4shell, by ending an information sharing partnership between the two organizations. The Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) stated they did not receive any notice from the Alibaba Cloud team about the vulnerability, which companies are “obliged to report” through its National Vulnerability Database website. The punishment has been given a timeline of six (6) months, after which the partnership may be revived depending on Alibaba’s response.