PHDays 9: new methods of Vulnerability Prioritization in Vulnerability Management products

On May 21, I spoke at the PHDays 9 conference. I talked about new methods of Vulnerability Prioritization in the products of Vulnerability Management vendors. During my 15 minutes time slot I defined the problems that this new technology has to solve, showed why these problems could NOT be solved...

Microsoft Patch Tuesday April 2022 and custom CVE comments sources in Vulristics

Hello everyone! This episode will be about Microsoft Patch Tuesday for April 2022 and new improvements in my Vulristics project. I decided to add more comment sources. Because its not just Tenable, Qualys, Rapid7 and ZDI make Microsoft Patch Tuesday reviews, but also other security companies and...

Security News: Microsoft Patch Tuesday September 2021, OMIGOD, MSHTML RCE, Confluence RCE, Ghostscript RCE, FORCEDENTRY Pegasus

Hello everyone! This time, lets talk about recent vulnerabilities. Ill start with Microsoft Patch Tuesday for September 2021. I created a report using my Vulristics tool. You can see the full report here. The most interesting thing about the September Patch Tuesday is that the top 3 VM vendors...

Vulnerability Intelligence based on media hype. It works? Grafana LFI and Log4j “Log4Shell” RCE

Hello everyone! In this episode, I want to talk about vulnerabilities, news and hype. The easiest way to get timely information on the most important vulnerabilities is to just read the news regularly, right? Well, I will try to reflect on this using two examples from last week. I have a security...

Microsoft Patch Tuesday January 2022

Hello everyone! This episode will be about Microsoft Patch Tuesday for January 2022. Traditionally, I will use my open source Vulristics tool for analysis. This time I didnt make any changes to how connectors work. The report generation worked correctly on the first try. python3.8 vulristics.py...

Spring4Shell, Spring Cloud Function RCE and Spring Cloud Gateway Code Injection

Hello everyone! This episode will be about last weeks high-profile vulnerabilities in Spring. Lets figure out what happened. Alternative video link for Russia: Of course, its amazing how fragmented the software development world has become. Now there are so many technologies, programming language...

Why you can’t update it all at once?

It’s the second part of our talk with Daniil Svetlov at his radio show “Safe Environment” recorded 29.03.2017. In this part we talk about vulnerabilities in Linux and proprietary software, problems of patch an vulnerability management, and mention some related compliance requirements. Video with...

New Advanced Dynamic Scan Policy Template in Nessus 8

According to Nessus 8.1.0 release notes, Tenable finally solved the problem with Mixed Plugin groups. At least partially. I will briefly describe the problem. Let's say we found out that some Nessus plugins crash our target systems. This happens rarely, but it happens. So, we decided to disable...

November Microsoft Patch Tuesday

November Microsoft Patch Tuesday. 125 CVEs, 35 of which were added since October MSPT. 2 vulnerabilities with signs of exploitation in the wild: Elevation of Privilege - Windows Task Scheduler CVE-2024-49039 Disclosure/Spoofing - NTLM Hash CVE-2024-43451 No signs of exploitation, but with a priva...

Last Week’s Security news: Pegasus, SeriousSAM, Sequoia

Hello everyone! After 4 episodes of the Last Weeks Security news, I decided to change the format. I will no longer try to cover all the important news, because it takes a long time to prepare such reviews. So, from now on, I will focus only on a few news of the past week, which I subjectively...

Log4j “Log4Shell” RCE explained (CVE-2021-44228)

Hello everyone! I decided to make a separate episode about Log4Shell. Of course, there have already been many reviews of this vulnerability. But I do it primarily for myself. It seems to me that serious problems with Log4j and similar libraries will be with us for a long time. Therefore, it would...

October 2023: back to Positive Technologies, Vulristics updates, Linux Patch Wednesday, Microsoft Patch Tuesday, PhysTech VM lecture

October 2023: back to Positive Technologies, Vulristics updates, Linux Patch Wednesday, Microsoft Patch Tuesday, PhysTech VM lecture. Hello everyone! October was an interesting and busy month for me. I started a new job, worked on my open source Vulristics project, and analyzed vulnerabilities...

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint: Why You May Need It and How to Export Hosts via API in Python

Hello everyone! In this episode, I want to talk about Microsoft Defender for Endpoint. It’s not a well-known free Defender antivirus built in Windows 10, but an enterprise level solution with the similar name. Yes, the naming is pretty confusing. I will not repeat Microsofts marketing thesis. Jus...

September 2023: VM courses, Bahasa Indonesia, Russian Podcasts, Goodbye Tinkoff, MS Patch Tuesday, Qualys TOP 20, Linux, Forrester, GigaOm, R-Vision VM

September 2023: VM courses, Bahasa Indonesia, Russian Podcasts, Goodbye Tinkoff, MS Patch Tuesday, Qualys TOP 20, Linux, Forrester, GigaOm, R-Vision VM. Hello everyone! On the last day of September, I decided to record another retrospective episode on how my Vulnerability Management month went...

Microsoft Patch Tuesday January 2023: ALPC EoP, Win Backup EoP, LocalPotato, Exchange, Remote RCEs

Hello everyone! This episode will be about Microsoft Patch Tuesday for January 2023, including vulnerabilities that were added between December and January Patch Tuesdays. Alternative video link for Russia: As usual, I use my open source Vulristics project to analyse and prioritize vulnerabilitie...

August 2023: GitHub PoCs, Vulristics, Qualys First-Party, Tenable ExposureAI, SC Awards and Rapid7, Anglo-Saxon list, MS Patch Tuesday, WinRAR, Juniper

August 2023: GitHub PoCs, Vulristics, Qualys First-Party, Tenable ExposureAI, SC Awards and Rapid7, Anglo-Saxon list, MS Patch Tuesday, WinRAR, Juniper. Hello everyone! This month I decided NOT to make an episode completely dedicated to Microsoft Patch Tuesday. Instead, this episode will be an...

Security News: Microsoft Patch Tuesday October 2021, Autodiscover, MysterySnail, Exchange, DNS, Apache, HAProxy, VMware vCenter, Moodle

Hello everyone! This episode will be about relatively recent critical vulnerabilities. Lets start with Microsoft Patch Tuesday for October 2021. Specifically, with the vulnerability that I expected there, but it didnt get there. Autodiscover leak discovered by Guardicore Labs "Autodiscover, a...

First look at Tenable.io Web Application Scanner (WAS)

When Tenable firstly announced Web Application Security scanner as a part of their new Tenable.io platform, it was quite intriguing. Certainly, they already had some WAS functionality before in Nessus. For example, path traversal check was pretty good. But this functionality was quite fragmental...

Vulners.com vulnerability detection plugins for Burp Suite and Google Chrome

What is the main idea of version-based vulnerability detection, especially for Web Applications? With an access to the HTTP response html, headers, scripts, etc., you can get the name and version of some standards web application e.g. CMS, CRM, wiki, task tracker or names and versions of software...

Vulristics Microsoft Patch Tuesday July 2021: Zero-days EoP in Kernel and RCE in Scripting Engine, RCEs in Kernel, DNS Server, Exchange and Hyper-V

Hello everyone! For the past 9 months, Ive been doing Microsoft Patch Tuesday reviews quarterly. Now I think it would be better to review the July Patch Tuesday while the topic is still fresh. And that will save us some time in the next Last Week’s Security news episode. So, July Patch Tuesday, 1...

Vulristics Command Line Interface, improved Product & Vuln. Type Detections and Microsoft Patch Tuesday November 2021

Hello everyone! In this episode I want to highlight the latest changes in my Vulristics project. For those who dont know, this is a utility for prioritizing CVE vulnerabilities based on data from various sources.. Currently Microsoft, NVD, Vulners, AttackerKB. Command Line Interface I started...

Microsoft Patch Tuesday June 2023: Edge type confusion, Git RCE, OneNote Spoofing, PGM RCE, Exchange RCE, SharePoint EoP

Microsoft Patch Tuesday June 2023: Edge type confusion, Git RCE, OneNote Spoofing, PGM RCE, Exchange RCE, SharePoint EoP. Hello everyone! This episode will be about Microsoft Patch Tuesday for June 2023, including vulnerabilities that were added between May and June Patch Tuesdays. Alternative...

Security News: Microsoft Patch Tuesday August 2021, Phishers Started Using reCAPTCHA, Scan 1 IP and Go to Jail

Hello everyone! Yet another news episode. Microsofts August Patch Tuesday Lets start with Microsofts August Patch Tuesday. I think the most interesting thing is that it contains a fix for the PetitPotam vulnerability. I talked about this vulnerability two weeks ago. At the time, Microsoft had no...

Microsoft Patch Tuesday June 2020: The Bleeding Ghost of SMB

This time, Microsoft addressed 129 vulnerabilities: 11 critical and 118 important. In fact, in the file that I exported from the Microsoft website, I saw 2 more CVEs CVE-2020-1221, CVE-2020-1328 related to Microsoft Dynamics 365 on-premises. But there is no information on them on the Microsoft...

0day RCE in Firefox

This seems like a pretty interesting vulnerability CVE-2019-17026 in Firefox and Thunderbird in Windows, MacOS and Linux. "Incorrect alias information in IonMonkey JIT compiler for setting array elements could lead to a type confusion. We are aware of targeted attacks in the wild abusing this...

How to fix “Nessus failed to load the SSH private key” error?

If you are using Nessus to scan Linux hosts and authenticate by key, you may encounter this problem. You have generated the keys correctly, placed the public key on a remote server. You can connect to this server using the private key. ssh -p22 -i privatekey [email protected] But when...

Automated posting on Vkontakte public pages using VK API and Python

Vk.com Vkontakte is the most popular social network Russia and Ex-USSR with 430+ million users. Originally it was a Facebook clone. But now, after 10 years of development, these two services are quite different from each other. Traditional advantages of vk.com - huge amount of free music and vide...

Microsoft Patch Tuesday March 2022

Hello everyone! I am glad to greet you from the most sanctioned country in the world. Despite all the difficulties, we carry on. I even have some time to release new episodes. This time it will be about Microsoft Patch Tuesday for March 2022. Alternative video link for Russia: I do the analysis a...

Vulristics: Beyond Microsoft Patch Tuesdays, Analyzing Arbitrary CVEs

Hello everyone! In this episode I would like to share an update for my Vulristics project. For those who dont know, in this project I am working on an alternative vulnerability scoring based on publicly available data to highlight vulnerabilities that need to be fixed as soon as possible. Roughly...

Somebody is watching you: IP camera, TV and Emma Watson’s smartphone

Today I want to talk today about privacy in a most natural sense. You probably have an internet-connected device with camera an microphone: smartphone, tablet, smart TV, ip camera, baby monitor, etc. - Can it be used to record video/audio and spy on you? - Of course, yes! - Only government and...

CentOS 8 with IceWM Desktop Environment

Do you need CentOS 8 with IceWM as desktop Operating System? Most likely not. Especially if you want it to work smoothly without any worries and troubles. However, if you enjoy playing with new desktop environments, you might find it fun. My reasons were as follows: 1. I wanted to use the same...

Making CVE-1999-0016 (landc) vulnerability detection script for Windows NT

The fair question is why in 2018 someone might want to deal with Windows NT and vulnerabilities in it. Now Windows NT is a great analogue of DVWA Damn Vulnerable Web Application, but for operating systems. There are a lot of well-described vulnerabilities with ready-made exploits. A great tool fo...

My short review of “The Forrester Wave: Vulnerability Risk Management, Q1 2018”

Last week, March 14, Forrester presented new report about Vulnerability Risk Management VRM market. You can purchase it on official site for $2495 USD or get a free reprint on Rapid7 site. Thanks, Rapid7! I've read it and what to share my impressions. I was most surprised by the leaders of the...

Guinea Pig and Vulnerability Management products

IMHO, security vendors use the term "Vulnerability Management" extremely inaccurate. Like a guinea pig, which is not a pig and is not related to Guinea, the current Vulnerability Management products are not about the actual practically exploitable vulnerabilities and not really about the...

February Microsoft Patch Tuesday

February Microsoft Patch Tuesday. A total of 55 vulnerabilities, half as many as in January. There are as many as six ❗️ vulnerabilities being exploited in the wild: 🔻 SFB/RCE - Windows Shell CVE-2026-21510 🔻 SFB/RCE - Microsoft Word CVE-2026-21514 🔻 SFB - MSHTML Framework CVE-2026-21513 🔻 EoP -...

I have finalized the list of trending vulnerabilities for 2024 according to Positive Technologies

I have finalized the list of trending vulnerabilities for 2024 according to Positive Technologies. Last year, 74 vulnerabilities were classified as trending to compare the scale, just over 40,000 were added to NVD in 2024. All trending vulnerabilities are found in Western commercial products and...

What is a vulnerability and what is not?

It looks like a pretty simple question. I used it to started my MIPT lecture. But actually the answer is not so obvious. There are lots of formal definitions of a vulnerability. For example in NIST Glossary there are 17 different definitions. The most popular one used in 13 documents is:...

Microsoft Patch Tuesday July 2020: my new open source project Vulristics, DNS SIGRed, RDP Client and SharePoint

I am doing this episode about July vulnerabilities already in August. There are 2 reasons for this. First of all, July Microsoft Patch Tuesday was published in the middle of the month, as late as possible. Secondly, in the second half of July I spent my free time mostly on coding. And I would lik...

Microsoft Patch Tuesday November 2022: Exchange ProxyNotShell RCE, JScript9, MoTW, OpenSSL, Edge, CNG, Print Spooler

Hello everyone! This episode will be about Microsoft Patch Tuesday for November 2022, including vulnerabilities that were added between October and November Patch Tuesdays. As usual, I use my open source Vulristics project to create the report. Alternative video link for Russia: The most importan...

New Nessus 7 Professional and the end of cost-effective Vulnerability Management (as we knew it)

It's an epic and really sad news. When people asked me about the cost-effective solution for Vulnerability Management I usually answered: "Nessus Professional with some additional automation through Nessus API". With just a couple of Nessus Professional scanning nodes it was possible to scan all...

Tenable University: Nessus Certificate of Proficiency

Yesterday I finished "Nessus Certificate of Proficiency" learning plan at Tenable University and passed the final test. Here I would like to share my impressions. First of all, few words about my motivation. I use Nessus literally every day at work. So, it was fun to check my knowledge. I already...

Martian Vulnerability Chronicles

Well, there should have been an optimistic post about my vulnerability analysis & classification pet-project. Something like "blah-blah-blah the situation is pretty bad, tons of vulnerabilities and it's not clear which of them can be used by attackers. BUT there is a way how to make it better usi...

March episode “In the Trend of VM” (#13): vulnerabilities of Microsoft, PAN-OS, СommuniGate and who should patch hosts with deployed application

March episode "In the Trend of VM" 13: vulnerabilities of Microsoft, PAN-OS, СommuniGate and who should patch hosts with deployed application. I'm posting the translated video with a big delay, but it's better than never. Video on YouTube and LinkedIn Post on Habr rus Digest on the PT website...

Microsoft Patch Tuesday May 2023: Microsoft Edge, BlackLotus Secure Boot SFB, OLE RCE, Win32k EoP, NFS RCE, PGM RCE, LDAP RCE, SharePoint RCE

Microsoft Patch Tuesday May 2023: Microsoft Edge, BlackLotus Secure Boot SFB, OLE RCE, Win32k EoP, NFS RCE, PGM RCE, LDAP RCE, SharePoint RCE. Hello everyone! This episode will be about Microsoft Patch Tuesday for May 2023, including vulnerabilities that were added between April and May Patch...

My thoughts on the “2021 Gartner Market Guide for Vulnerability Assessment”. What about the quality?

The Gartner Vulnerability Management Reports are one of the few marketing reports that I try to read regularly. This started back in the days when I was working for a VM vendor doing competitive analysis. Gartner is one of the few organizations that think about Vulnerability Assessment and...

About Cross Site Scripting – MDaemon Email Server (CVE-2024-11182)

About Cross Site Scripting - MDaemon Email Server CVE-2024-11182. An attacker can send an HTML-formatted email containing malicious JavaScript code embedded in an img tag. If the user opens the email in the MDaemon Email Server's web interface, the malicious JavaScript code will execute in the...

What’s wrong with patch-based Vulnerability Management checks?

My last post about Guinea Pigs and Vulnerability Management products may seem unconvincing without some examples. So, let's review one. It's a common problem that exists among nearly all VM vendors, I will demonstrate it on Tenable Nessus. If you perform vulnerability scans, you most likely seen...

November Linux Patch Wednesday

November Linux Patch Wednesday. I was happy in October that the number of vulnerabilities was gradually decreasing to an acceptable level, and in November I got a peak again. A total of 803 vulnerabilities. Of these, 567 are in the Linux Kernel. Kind of crazy. 2 vulnerabilities in Chromium with...

OpenVAS Knowledge Base become smaller

At 23 January Jan Oliver Wagner, leader of OpenVAS project and Greenbone CEO, sent an email with a subject "Attic Cleanup". In this message, he mentioned, that some NASL plugins will be excluded from the public NVT / Greenbone Community Feed GCF soon. On the one hand it seems logical. These old...

Non-reliable Nessus scan results

Do you perform massive unauthenticated vulnerability scans with Nessus? It might be a bad idea. It seems that Nessus is not reliable enough to assess hundreds and thousands of hosts in one scan and can lose some valuable information. The thing is that sometimes Nessus does not detect open ports a...