Risk Fact #3: Initial Access Brokers Attack What Organizations Ignore

Qualys Blog Series – Threat Research Unit Report “Divide and Conquer” is an emerging and winning strategy for cyber criminals who split responsibilities to improve execution of the attack process. Some threat actors specialize in the back end, which often is ransomware deployed at scale. The fron...

Risk Fact #2: Automation Is the Difference Between Success and Failure

Qualys Blog Series – Threat Research Unit Report Organizational leaders dread the consequences of a successful cyber-attack, which can be devastating due to data loss, reputational damage, and legal repercussions. Under the hood, security professionals are acutely focused on finding technical mea...

Risk Fact #1: Speed Is the Key to Out-Maneuvering Adversaries

Qualys Blog Series – Threat Research Unit Report The 2023 Qualys TruRisk Research Report from the Qualys Threat Research Unit TRU provides detailed research insights that are organized into five separate Risk Facts. In this blog, we look at Risk Fact 1 - Speed is the key to out-maneuvering...

ACSC Essential 8 Cybersecurity Strategies, Maturity Levels, and Best Practices

Originally published in 2017 as an evolution of the Australian Signals Directorate’s Strategies to Mitigate Cyber Security Incidents, the Australian Cyber Security Centre ACSC Essential 8 E8 consists of a set of strategies that can make it harder for threat actors to compromise a firm’s...

A New Approach to Discover, Monitor, and Reduce Your Modern Web Attack Surface

Web applications reign the internet universe, but also bring new risks that let attackers poke holes in an ever-expanding attack surface. Stolen credentials have been the historical culprit. Recent analysis saw a spike in exploits targeting web applications directly through specially-crafted...

Staying Ahead of Ransomware Threats

Ransomware attacks have become a growing threat to organizations of all sizes and sectors. Many of these attacks exploit known vulnerabilities, making organizations need to quickly identify and fix these weaknesses to prevent a potential ransomware incident. This is where the Ransomware...

The March 2023 Patch Tuesday Security Update Review

Microsoft has released its monthly security update for March 2023. This months updates addressed various vulnerabilities in different products. Lets go through this months Patch Tuesday details and discuss the security updates. Microsoft Patches for March 2023 Microsoft has addressed 101...

Qualys VMDR & Jira Integration Now Available

The increasing number of vulnerabilities poses a significant challenge for most organizations trying to effectively manage and mitigate Cyber risks. According to NVD, the number of vulnerabilities in 2022 increased by approximately 25% as compared to 2021. As we are in start of March the...

What’s Next After Log4Shell?

How To Deal With the Next Open-Source Vulnerability Using Custom Scripts A critical vulnerability in Apache’s Log4j Java-based logging utility CVE-2021-44228 was previously referred to as the “most critical vulnerability of the last decade.” In the wake of Log4Shell exploits, many security...

Automating Vulnerability Management with Qualys VMDR & ServiceNow

With a growing number of cyber-attacks and the push to stay ahead of adversaries, the Vulnerability Management lifecycle has become necessary for ensuring enterprise-grade cyber resiliency. For many organizations, there is a persistent challenge in supporting vulnerability assessment and...

Forta GoAnywhere Zero-Day Exploited By Threat Actors

On February 1st, 2023, Forta released an advisory behind an auth wall notifying their customers of a remote code execution zero-day exploit affecting their GoAnywhere Managed File Transfer MFT application. This was picked up by Brian Krebs, an investigative journalist who published this on his...

The February 2023 Patch Tuesday Security Update Review

Microsoft and Adobe have released several monthly security fixes and updates for their products. Let’s take a look at the highlights of this month’s Patch Tuesday as we review and discuss the security updates. Microsoft Patches for February 2023 Microsoft has patched 79 vulnerabilities this month...

Don’t forget about risk remediation of your macOS assets

Employees love for Macs has propelled tremendous growth for Apple. According to a recent study by Parallels, 55% of businesses use Mac devices themselves or explicitly approve of their use within the company. It is hard to believe Macs have been around for almost 4 decades. Largely introduced to...

Real-Time Defense of Multi-Cloud Environments From Malicious Attacks and Threats

Organizations today cannot detect real-time threats at runtime due to the multi-cloud infrastructure, resulting in the possibility of malicious actors exploiting the environment. It is imperative for the modern organization to have a solution to detect advanced run-time threats in real-time to...

Announcing General Availability of Qualys TotalCloud

Qualys TotalCloud is a CNAPP solution based on Qualys Cloud Platform that provides multi-cloud vulnerability detection and misconfiguration response, and today we are pleased to announce that TotalCloud is now generally available. TotalCloud Home Page Unified View of Multi-Cloud Risk Posture...

Blind SQL Injection – Content-Based, Time-Based Approaches

Blind SQL Injection Overview Blind SQL InjectionBSQL is a type of SQL Injection SQLI vulnerability, where an attacker exploits the application to extract information from the database. An application vulnerable to SQLI displays application-specific information in the response when it is exploited...

Introducing Enterprise TruRisk Management from Qualys

Since the release of Qualys VMDR 2.0 with TruRisk last year, our customers have quickly adopted it to perform cyber risk assessments across the entire enterprise. With detail-rich cyber risk visualization, customers can now pinpoint the areas of their business exposed to elevated levels of cyber...

Launching Qualys Cloud Threat Database

We are proud to announce the release of the Qualys Cloud Threat Database which correlates more than 25 different threat intelligence feeds into a single source for all Qualys products to leverage. This comprehensive vulnerability and threat intelligence database pulls from trusted sources such as...

Ransomware Targets Outdated VMware ESXi Hypervisors: Protect Your Systems Now!

Updated on February 8, 2023 at 2:40 PM Pacific Standard Time: This article has been updated with EVALUATE Vendor-Suggested Mitigation with Policy Compliance PC Updated on February 7, 2023 at 9:05 PM Pacific Standard Time: This article has been updated with the latest information on the...

macOS Patching Is Here!

In the past few years, many of our customers have seen a sharp increase in the number of Mac devices introduced to their environment. All those new Mac devices introduce new vulnerabilities that must be remediated. To keep up with the new volume of vulnerabilities, organizations had to opt-in, bu...

Is your FIM Solution Cost and Time Efficient?

Virtually every security professional and corporate executive is painfully aware of recent escalations in cybersecurity threats. No one wants to be a headline or get hit with the typical $4.5 million price tag to remediate an incident IBM Study. Almost every security team will agree that file...

CVE-2023-25136: Pre-Auth Double Free Vulnerability in OpenSSH Server 9.1

OpenSSH, the widely used open-source implementation of the Secure Shell SSH protocol, recently released version 9.2 on 2023-02-02 to address a pre-authentication vulnerability in the OpenSSH server version 9.1. This specific version of the OpenSSH server, which was released in October 2022, was...

Why FedRAMP High Authorization Can Ensure High Cybersecurity Maturity

The Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program FedRAMP is a U.S. government initiative that promotes the adoption of secure cloud services across the U.S. federal government by providing a standardized approach to security and risk assessment for cloud technologies. FedRAMP reduces...

Managing Security Configuration Risk with the Most Comprehensive Configuration Compliance Solution!

Qualys leads the industry with 850 policies, 19000 controls, 350 technologies, and 100 frameworks Remote and hybrid work, digital transformation, and customer experience initiatives require rapid and continuous technology additions and changes. This requires continual additions of and deployments...

The January 2023 Oracle Critical Patch Update

This Oracle Critical Patch Update contains a group of patches for multiple security vulnerabilities that address 327 new security patches. Some of the vulnerabilities addressed this month impact various products. These patches address vulnerabilities in Oracle code and in third-party components...

Detection of Vulnerabilities in JavaScript Libraries

JavaScript is a popular programming language which is an integral component while developing interactive and dynamic web applications. It allows developers to create engaging and responsive user interfaces, handling complex web page elements, enhancing the overall functionality of the application...

The January 2023 Patch Tuesday Security Update Review

As we enter the first second Tuesday of the year, it is noteworthy that both Microsoft and Adobe have released their latest security updates and fixes. We invite you to join us as we review and discuss the particulars of these essential security patches. Microsoft Patches for January 2023 Microso...

Driving CISA Compliance with Qualys

How CyberSecurity Asset Management with External Attack Surface Management Improves Compliance for the Protection of National Infrastructure Since 2018, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA of the U.S. government has focused on reducing risk and building resilience to cyber a...

Implement Risk-Based Vulnerability Management with Qualys TruRisk™: Part 3

In this final blog of the series, we will discuss the importance of implementing effective risk-based remediation strategies to reduce the risk of vulnerabilities being exploited in your environment. In the earlier blogs, we covered how to operationalize Qualys TruRisk and to effectively visualiz...

BitRAT Now Sharing Sensitive Bank Data as a Lure

Introduction In June of 2022 Qualys Threat Research Unit TRU wrote an in-depth report on Redline, a commercial off the shelf infostealer that spreads via fake cracked software hosted on Discord’s content delivery network. Since then, we have continued to track similar threats to identify their...

Qualys Threat Research Unit: Threat Thursdays, December 2022

Welcome to the fourth edition of the Qualys Threat Research Unit’s TRU “Threat Research Thursday”, where we collect and curate notable new tools, techniques, procedures, threat intelligence, cybersecurity news, malware attacks, and more. This also happens to be the last edition for the year...

Implement Risk-Based Vulnerability Management with Qualys TruRisk™ : Part 2

This blog is a continuation of our first blog on implementing risk-based vulnerability management with Qualys TruRiskTM. In the first blog, we covered how to correctly tag and categorize assets for accurate risk assessment. Now that you have properly tagged your assets, Qualys TruRiskTM will...

The December 2022 Patch Tuesday Security Update Review

Welcome to the final second Tuesday of the year. As expected, Microsoft and Adobe have released their latest security updates and fixes. Take a break from your holiday preparations and join us as we review the details of the latest security patches. Microsoft Patches for December 2022 In this...

Dissecting the Empire C2 Framework

Introduction In this blog we will be taking a quick dive into Empire, a popular open-source post-exploitation framework. Empire provides an adversary with the capability to expand his foothold in a victim’s environment by leveraging hundreds of modules, RATs in multiple languages and stealthy C2...

Implement Risk-Based Vulnerability Management with Qualys TruRisk™ : Part 1

For today’s CISOs, managing cyber risk is Job 1 priority, and it’s a full-time concern. Security practitioners are spending a considerable amount of time responding to cybersecurity threats and finding ways to reduce risk from threats that are unknown. Earlier this year Qualys introduced Qualys...

The 9th Google Chrome Zero-Day Threat this Year – Again Just Before the Weekend

Google has released yet another security update for the Chrome desktop web browser to address a high-severity vulnerability that is being exploited in the wild. This is the ninth Chrome zero-day fixed this year by Google. This security bug CVE-2022-4262; QID 377804 is a Type Confusion vulnerabili...

Identify Server-Side Attacks Using Qualys Periscope

Qualys previously announced the introduction of Qualys Periscope in 2020. This technology allows Qualys Web Application Scanning WAS to detect out-of-band vulnerabilities such as server-side request forgery SSRF. Qualys Periscope provides confirmed detections for additional vulnerabilities, such ...

Effective Vulnerability Management with Stakeholder Specific Vulnerability Categorization (SSVC) and Qualys TruRisk

Security stakeholders across the globe have long relied on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System CVSS to prioritize vulnerabilities and assess their risk posture. The reason why the CVSS has become the standard for many security and vulnerability management teams alike is that this method is ea...

Snapd Race Condition Vulnerability in snap-confine’s must_mkdir_and_open_with_perms() (CVE-2022-3328)

The Qualys Threat Research Unit TRU has discovered a new vulnerability in snap-confine function on Linux operating systems, a SUID-root program installed by default on Ubuntu. Qualys recommends that security teams apply the patch for this vulnerability as soon as possible. In February 2022, Qualy...

Qualys Broadens Security Offerings for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure

As organizations increase their use of public cloud platforms, they encounter cloud-specific security and compliance threats, which can be challenging to address without the right tools and processes. Organizations’ cloud security difficulties lie in two main areas: Lack of visibility into their...

Don’t Spend Your Holiday Season Patching Chrome

As we come back from our Thanksgiving holidays, Google has released yet another security update for the Chrome desktop web browser to address a high-severity vulnerability that exists in the wild. This is the eighth Chrome zero-day fixed this year by Google. This security bug CVE-2022-4135; QID...

Ease Your Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification Journey With Qualys

The Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification CMMC is a cybersecurity training, certification, and assessment program from the United States Department of Defense DoD. CMMC is designed to provide increased assurance to the DoD that a contractor can adequately protect controlled unclassified...

QSC 2022: That’s a Wrap!

Over the years, the threat landscape has exploded, and bad actors have become increasingly sophisticated, making the demand for cloud security platforms - that save security teams time and increase efficiency - a must-have for every cyber arsenal. This was underscored last week at QSC 2022 Las...

QSC 2022: Listening to the Voice of the Customer

It would be redundant to state that today’s threat landscape is growing increasingly sophisticated and erratic. With all types of attacks becoming “commonplace,” the baseline for normal is abnormal. Bad actors are taking advantage of whatever attack vector they can whether that is a phishing...

QSC 2022: Qualys’ Threat Research Unit (TRU) – Our Shield Is Your Shield

Day two of QSC profiled the special launch of the Qualys Threat Research Unit, TRU. Taking the audience through a madcap tour of what the threat research unit is doing to provide intelligence and actionable insights into its census was Travis Smith, VP of Qualys Threat Research Unit. He dove deep...

QSC 2022 Day 1 Recap: Qualys Gives Organizations More Security in an Ever-Expanding Threat Landscape

The first day of Qualys’ annual security conference in Vegas was filled with a series of presentations by Qualys executives, product managers and customers’ stories about how they used the various security products. The keynotes given by Shark Tank celebrity businessman and CEO of Cyderes, Robert...

QSC 2022 Kickoff: Quantifying and Qualifying Digital Cyber Risks

Qualys’ annual security conference returned to a live-only event this week at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas, and the keynote addresses started things off on a very practical note… about selling coconuts, toasters, and carbon monoxide detectors. The first two keynotes featured speeches from both...

November 2022 Patch Tuesday | Microsoft Releases 65 New Vulnerabilities with 10 Critical; Adobe Releases Zero Advisories (for the first time in six years).

Microsoft Patch Tuesday Summary Microsoft has fixed 65 new vulnerabilities aka flaws in the November 2022 update, including ten 10 vulnerabilities classified as Critical as they allow Denial of Service DoS, Elevation of Privilege EoP, and Remote Code Execution RCE. This months Patch Tuesday...

Get Your Patch Tuesday Vulnerabilities Patched on Tuesday

Every IT person is familiar with Patch Tuesdays. It’s the time of the month where IT needs to put their daily work aside and prepare for patching their entire IT environment. However, for many organizations Patch Tuesday is not a single event that occurs as an isolated point in time. It typically...

OpenSSL Vulnerability Recap

Last week a CRITICAL vulnerability in OpenSSL was pre-announced to give organizations a head start in coming up with a playbook for how to address the highest severity OpenSSL vulnerability since Heartbleed in 2014. A lot of effort was put in by vendors and organizations alike to come up with a...