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...

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...

Security News: Exchange ProxyShell, Zoom RCE, Citrix Canceled PT Acknowledgments, Cisco No Patch Router RCEs

Hello everyone! This is a new episode with my comments on the latest Information Security news. Exchange ProxyShell I want to start with something about attacks on Exchange. ProxyShell is in the news, the LockFile ransomware compromised more than 2000 servers. On the other hand, there is basicall...

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...

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...

Microsoft Patch Tuesday August 2020: vulnerabilities with Detected Exploitation, useful for phishing and others

This time I would like to review not only the vulnerabilities that were published in the last August Microsoft Patch Tuesday, but also the CVEs that were published on other, not Patch Tuesday, days. Of course, if there are any. But lets start with the vulnerabilities that were presented on MS Pat...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Microsoft Patch Tuesday September 2020: Zerologon and other exploits, RCEs in SharePoint and Exchange

I would like to start this post by talking about Microsoft vulnerabilities, which recently turned out to be much more serious than it seemed at first glance. Older Vulnerabilities with exploits "Zerologon" Netlogon RCE CVE-2020-1472 One of them is, of course, the Netlogon vulnerability from the...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Vulnerability Management news and publications #2

Hello everyone! This is the second episode of Vulnerability Management news and publications. In fact, this is a collection of my posts from the avleonovcom and avleonovrus telegram channels. Therefore, if you want to read them earlier, subscribe to these channels. The main idea of ​​this episode...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Kenna Security: Connectors and REST API

In the last post about Kenna Security cloud service I mentioned their main features for analyzing data from different vulnerability scanners. Now let's see how to import Tenable Nessus scan results in Kenna. Here you can see the list of connectors for all supported products: Three connectors for...

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...

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...

Microsoft Patch Tuesday April 2020: my classification script, confusing RCE in Adobe Type Manager and updates for older vulnerabilities

Easiest task ever? Making the reviews of Microsoft Patch Tuesday vulnerabilities should be an easy task. All vulnerability data is publicly available. Even better, dozens of reviews have already been written. Just read them, combine and post. Right? Not really. In fact it is quite boring and...

MaxPatrol 8 installation process

Today I have a great opportunity to write about MaxPatrol 8. For me it is a very nostalgic experience. I worked for many year in Positive Technologies developing this product. And now I can write about it from the customer side. MaxPatrol is still not very well known outside Russia and CIS,...

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:...

Scaner-VS: Vulnerability Management solution for Russian Military

Scaner-VS is a Vulnerability Assessment system developed by Moscow-based NPO Echelon. It's pretty popular in Russian government organizations, especially in Russian Army, because it comply all government requirements, has all necessary certificates and is relatively cheap. As for requirements and...

Managing JIRA Scrum Sprints using API

Atlassian Jira is a great tool for organizing Agile processes, especially Scrum. But managing Scrum Sprints manually using Jira web GUI maybe time consuming and annoying. So, I decided to automate some routine operations using JIRA API and Python. The API calls are described on the official page ...

Joint Advisory AA22-279A and Vulristics

Hello everyone! This episode will be about the new hot twenty vulnerabilities from CISA, NSA and FBI, Joint cybersecurity advisory CSA AA22-279A, and how I analyzed these vulnerabilities using my open source project Vulristics. Alternative video link for Russia: Americans cant just release a list...

Big Microsoft day: EOL for Win7, Win2008 and crypt32.dll

Big Microsoft day. End-of-life for Windows 7 desktops and Windows 2008 servers strictly speaking Windows Server 2008 R2. I think that today many security guys had a fun task to count how many host hosts with win7 and win2008 they still have in the organization. So, Asset Management is a necessity...

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...

PHDays VII: To Vulnerability Database and beyond

Last Tuesday and Wednesday, May 23-24, I attended PHDays VII conference in Moscow. I was talking there about vulnerability databases and the evolution process of vulnerability assessment tools, as far as I understand it. But first of all, a few words about the conference itself. I can tell that...

Problems of Vulnerability Prioritization and Detection

It’s the third part of our talk with Daniil Svetlov at his radio show “Safe Environment” recorded 29.03.2017. In this part we talk about Vulnerability Prioritization and Detection: Common Vulnerability Scoring System CVSS Environmental factor Manual and automated vulnerability detection...

Exploitability attributes of Nessus plugins: good, bad and Vulners

Exploitability is one of the most important criteria for prioritizing vulnerabilities. Let's see how good is the exploit-related data of Tenable Nessus NASL plugins and whether we can do it better. What are the attributes related to exploits? To understand this, I parsed all nasl plugins and got...

A few words about Gartner’s “Magic Quadrant for Application Security Testing” 2018

February and March are the hot months for marketing reports. I already wrote about IDC and Forrester reports about Vulnerability Management-related markets. And this Monday, March 19, Gartner released new "Magic Quadrant for Application Security Testing". You can buy it on the official website fo...

Potential RCE in Nessus 7 and attacks on Vulnerability Scanners

A few days ago I saw an interesting youtube video UPD. 14.05.18 Not available anymore in my Facebook feed. It is demonstrating the exploitation of the RCE vulnerability in Tenable Nessus Professional 7.0.3. Currently we have very few information about this vulnerability: only youtube video, which...

Getting Hosts from Microsoft Intune MDM using Python

Today I want to talk about Microsoft Intune. It is a Mobile Device Management platform. Well, I think that the importance of MDM systems has become much higher than it was before the days of covid-19. Simply because a lot more people now work remotely using corporate laptops. And if these people...