Will The Real Security Community Please Stand Up

Threatpost Op-Ed is a regular feature where experts contribute essays and commentary on what’s happening in security and privacy. Black Hat 2017 was a vocabulary lesson for white-hats, and yes, words matter. Words such as nihilism, empathy and inclusion have to matter, because what you’re doing n...

NSA Collects MS Windows Error Information

Back in 2013, Der Spiegel reported that the NSA intercepts and collects Windows bug reports: One example of the sheer creativity with which the TAO spies approach their work can be seen in a hacking method they use that exploits the error-proneness of Microsoft's Windows. Every user of the...

TippingPoint Threat Intelligence and Zero-Day Coverage – Week of July 24, 2017

This week, I attended the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. 2017 marked the 20th anniversary of the Black Hat conference. A lot has certainly changed since I started attending back in 2002. I’m sure that many will have their opinions on the central themes that they saw at the conference...

Zero-Day Vulnerabilities against Windows in the NSA Tools Released by the Shadow Brokers

In April, the Shadow Brokers -- presumably Russia -- released a batch of Windows exploits from what is presumably the NSA. Included in that release were eight different Windows vulnerabilities. Given a presumed theft date of the data as sometime between 2012 and 2013 -- based on timestamps of the...

Microsoft Is Paying Up To $250,000 With Its New Bug Bounty Program

Microsoft has finally launched a new dedicated bug bounty program to encourage security researchers and bug hunters for finding and responsibly reporting vulnerabilities in its latest Windows versions of operating systems and software. Being the favourite target of hackers and cyber criminals,...

Adobe is Finally Killing FLASH — At the End of 2020!

Finally, Adobe is Killing FLASH — the software that helped make the Internet a better place with slick graphics, animation, games and applications and bring online video to the masses, but it has been hated for years by people and developers over its buggy nature. But the end of an era for Adobe...

TippingPoint Threat Intelligence and Zero-Day Coverage – Week of July 17, 2017

If you conduct a search on the Web for the number of languages spoken around the world, you’ll see numbers ranging anywhere from 6,000-7,000. I figure I’m doing okay since I can speak English and Spanish, sign the English alphabet, recite the Greek alphabet, and read music. There are roughly over...

July 19, 2017 – Morning Cyber Coffee Headlines – “Rosetta Stone” Edition

Good morning! Sit with Carbon Black this morning over a cup of coffee or tea and browse a few industry headlines to get the day started. We’ve got just enough information below to get you through that first cup…enjoy! July 19, 2017 - Headlines Cyberattack on Ukrainian Clinics, Pharmacies Worries...

CVE-2017-9791: Analysis of RCE in the Struts Showcase App in Struts 1 Plugin

On July 7th, a new security vulnerability was published in Apache Struts 2 CVE-2017-9791 S2-0481. Struts 2.3.x users with Struts 1 plugin, which includes the Showcase app, are vulnerable. Once again, this vulnerability enables a Remote Code Execution RCE, which is the most commonly exploited Apac...

Researcher Claims Samsung's Tizen OS is Poorly Programmed; Contains 27,000 Bugs!

A researcher has claimed that Samsung's Tizen operating system that runs on millions of Samsung products is so poorly programmed that it could contain nearly 27,000 programming errors, which could also lead to thousands of vulnerabilities. Tizen is a Linux-based open-source operating system backe...

Critical Flaws Found in Windows NTLM Security Protocol – Patch Now

As part of this month's Patch Tuesday, Microsoft has released security patches for a serious privilege escalation vulnerability which affect all versions of its Windows operating system for enterprises released since 2007. Researchers at behavioral firewall specialist Preempt discovered two...

Not All Threats Are Created Equal

In today’s world, security teams are bombarded constantly with security events and threat information from multiple sources, making it impossible to address each threat with the same amount of urgency. Where does one even start? We know every threat should be addressed, but not all threats are...

TippingPoint Threat Intelligence and Zero-Day Coverage – Week of July 3, 2017

It has been quoted by Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, and others that insanity is “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” I could say that in our world of cyber security, despite all the headlines about data breaches and ransomware, there is no “insanity.”...

The Real-World Impact of Bug Bounties and Vulnerability Research

Running the world’s largest vendor agnostic bug bounty program has afforded us the unique opportunity to purchase bugs of all varieties. The submissions to the Zero Day Initiative ZDI program range in severity from slightly annoying to hugely impactful. We wouldn’t have it any other way. Generall...

From BlackEnergy to ExPetr

Much has been written about the recent ExPetr/NotPetya/Nyetya/Petya outbreak - you can read our findings here:Schroedinger's Petya and ExPetr is a wiper, not ransomware. As in the case of Wannacry, attribution is very difficult and finding links with previously known malware is challenging. In th...

TippingPoint Threat Intelligence and Zero-Day Coverage – Week of June 26, 2017

The late 70s/early 80s American television show Three’s Company was one of my favorite shows growing up. The central theme of the show revolved around the lives of three roommates. Each episode usually involved a misunderstanding, then chaos would ensue. In the end, everything would turn out okay...

Microsoft Skype - v7.x Stack Buffer Overflow Vulnerability

Document Title: =============== Microsoft Skype - v7.x Stack Buffer Overflow Vulnerability References: =========== https://www.vulnerability-lab.com/getcontent.php?id=2084 Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUx2TSJ36-g Advisory: https://www.vulnerability-lab.com/getcontent.php?id=2071...

TippingPoint Threat Intelligence and Zero-Day Coverage – Week of June 19, 2017

Yesterday I celebrated my 29th birthday again and it was great to celebrate with friends, family, and coworkers. They say age is just a number, and I truly believe that. Unfortunately, we live in a world where laws require us to count numbers so that it can be determined if we can vote, drink, re...

The Inside Scoop on the World’s Leading Bug Bounty Program

Within the security researcher community, the Zero Day Initiative ZDI program is a well-known entity, representing the world’s largest vendor agnostic bug bounty program. Customers of the TippingPoint Intrusion Prevention Systems IPS and Threat Protection Systems TPS know the ZDI as the group tha...

TippingPoint Threat Intelligence and Zero-Day Coverage – Week of June 12, 2017

“What can you sit on, sleep on, and brush your teeth with?” This was the question posed to Steve Martin’s character C.D. Bales in the 1987 movie Roxanne. In a modern take of Edmond Rostand's 1897 verse play Cyrano de Bergerac, the movie centers around C.D.’s attempt to win the love of a woman whi...