Why Is Snapshot Scanning Not Enough?

As new scanning technologies are released, their supposed superiority is touted over the others. The problem is, however, that there is no best scanning technology, all of them have strengths and limitations. If recent claims from several vendors are believed, a “best” scanning method called...

Introducing TotalCloud – Cloud Security Simplified

The shift of business applications and on-premises infrastructure to the cloud has resulted in cloud security teams needing to manage the cyber security risks across the workloads, cloud services, resources, users, and applications. Today, security teams must deal with a set of siloed...

Qualys Research Alert: OpenSSL 3.0.7 – What You Need To Know

On Tuesday, November 1, 2022, the OpenSSL project released a new version of OpenSSL with version 3.0.7. This update patches two buffer overflow vulnerabilities which can be triggered in X.509 certificate verification. These vulnerabilities only apply to OpenSSL 3.x. Both these vulnerabilities are...

Don’t spend another weekend patching Chrome

As we head into the weekend, Google has released an emergency security update for the Chrome desktop web browser to address a high-severity vulnerability known to be exploited in the wild. This is the seventh Chrome zero-day fixed this year by Google. This security bug CVE-2022-3723; QID 377721 i...

Chrome Zero Day – Just Before the Weekend (again)

As we head into the weekend, Google has released an emergency security update for the Chrome desktop web browser to address a high-severity vulnerability known to be exploited in the wild. This is the seventh Chrome zero-day fixed this year by Google. This security bug CVE-2022-3723; QID 377721 i...

Qualys Research Team: Threat Thursdays, October 2022

Welcome to the third edition of the Qualys Research Team’s “Threat Research Thursday”, where we collect and curate notable new tools, techniques, procedures, threat intelligence, cybersecurity news, malware attacks, and more. Feedback on our second edition, Qualys Threat Research Thursday, is mor...

Text4Shell: Detect, Prioritize and Remediate The Risk Across On-premise, Cloud, Container Environment Using Qualys Platform

On 2022-10-13, Apache Security Team disclosed a critical vulnerability with CVE-2022-42889 affecting the popular Apache Commons Text library. This vulnerability is popularly named “Text4Shell” which when exploited can allow an unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary code on the vulnerable...

Join Us November 7-10 for Qualys Security Conference 2022 Las Vegas!

Get ready for our annual event for cybersecurity professionals: Qualys Security Conference 2022 Las Vegas! This years theme is Get More Security which emphasizes simplifying security to drive better outcomes. At the event, you will experience two days of training followed by two days of keynotes,...

Fingerprinting Web Applications and APIs using Qualys Web Application Scanning

Decoding the impact of Fingerprinting Organizations develop an effective, actionable go-to-market plan to launch a profitable product into the target market. A go-to-market strategy predicts market demand by analyzing market research, competitor data, and previous examples. Without a solid...

Leeloo Multipath: Authorization bypass and symlink attack in multipathd (CVE-2022-41974 and CVE-2022-41973)

The Qualys Research Team has discovered two vulnerabilities in multipathd, the most important of which can be exploited for authorization bypass. Qualys recommends security teams apply patches for these vulnerabilities as soon as possible. The Qualys Research Team combined these two vulnerabiliti...

CVE-2022-42889: Detect Text4Shell via Qualys Container Security

A new critical vulnerability CVE-2022-42889 Text4Shell in Apache Commons Text library was reported by Alvaro Muñoz. The vulnerability, when exploited could result in remote code execution RCE applied to untrusted input due to insecure interpolation defaults. As a result, this CVE is rated at CVSS...

CISA BOD 23-01: Meeting and Exceeding CISA Requirements with Qualys

The latest Binding Operational Directive from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA BOD 23-01 requires agencies to implement an essential cybersecurity practice within the next 6 months. While this new mandate impacts agencies directly, it also impacts their supply chain...

Not Your Average FIM: Why Customers Choose Qualys FIM

Choosing the right FIM solution is a crucial step for an organization. One should not need professional services just to onboard or manage. Traditional FIM solutions with legacy architecture are either too noisy or too hard to use. The market demands an intelligent FIM solution that is easy to...

Creating Awareness of External JavaScript Libraries in Web Applications

Qualys Web Application Scanning WAS routinely reviews and solicits customer feedback regarding vulnerabilities. This may be to enhance the detection or the detections reporting. Previously, all JavaScript libraries detected on an application are reported under the Information Gathering QID 150176...

Award-winning Qualys Vulnerability and Compliance Solution now available on IBM zSystems & LinuxONE

Todays modern IBM mainframe is central to hybrid cloud environments, valued by two-thirds of the Fortune 100 as a highly secured platform for running mission-critical workloads. Not surprisingly, according to a recent IBM commissioned study by Celent, it is estimated that 70% of global bank cards...

JSON Web Token (JWT) Weaknesses

JSON Web Tokens, or JWTs, are an encoded set of claims commonly seen in REST APIs and Single page web applications SPAs. These encoded claims are used to provide identification of the requester and other information related to accessing. It is a stateless mechanism, and the token is sent with eve...

October 2022 Patch Tuesday | Microsoft Releases 84 Vulnerabilities with 13 Critical, plus 12 Microsoft Edge (Chromium-Based); Adobe Releases 4 Advisories, 29 Vulnerabilities with 17 Critical.

Microsoft Patch Tuesday Summary Microsoft has fixed 84 vulnerabilities aka flaws in the October 2022 update, including 13 vulnerabilities classified as Critical as they allow Elevation of Privilege EoP, Remote Code Execution RCE, and Spoofing. This months Patch Tuesday fixes two 2 zero-day...

In-Depth Look Into Data-Driven Science Behind Qualys TruRisk

Vulnerability Management is a foundational component of any cybersecurity program for the implementation of appropriate security controls and the management of cyber risk. Earlier this year Qualys introduced the latest iteration of its vulnerability management product VMDR 2.0 with TruRisk which...

NSA Alert: Topmost CVEs Actively Exploited By People’s Republic of China State-Sponsored Cyber Actors

On October 6, 2022, the United States National Security Agency NSA released a cybersecurity advisory on the Chinese government—officially known as the People’s Republic of China PRC states-sponsored cyber actors activity to seek national interests. These malicious cyber activities attributed to t...

Qualys Performance Tuning Series – Remove Stale Assets for Best Performance

As organizations transition to the cloud, their cloud environments and assets rapidly grow. Many of the assets within the cloud are ephemeral in nature, they exist for a few minutes, hours or days and then are terminated. These transitory assets pose a unique challenge from an asset and...

WhatsApp Fixed Critical Vulnerabilities that Could Let an Attacker Hack Devices Remotely – Automatically Discover and Remediate Using VMDR Mobile

WhatsApp has recently fixed critical and high-severity vulnerabilities affecting WhatsApp for Android, WhatsApp Business for Android, WhatsApp for iOS, and WhatsApp Business for iOS. Exploiting these vulnerabilities would be the first step of an attacker installing any malware on the device. In...

Qualys Response to ProxyNotShell Microsoft Exchange Server Zero-Day Threat Using Qualys Cloud Platform

On September 29, 2022, active attacks against Microsoft Exchange were reported by Vietnamese cybersecurity company GTSC. The researcher at GTSC reported two critical vulnerabilities now named “ProxyNotShell” in Microsoft Exchange Server via two advisories issued by Zero Day Initiative:...

Spelunking Your Qualys Data with Splunk

For the uninitiated, “spelunking” is the exploration of underground caves and caverns, and it’s not for the faint of heart. This increasingly popular sport involves walking, climbing, crawling, or zip-lining blindly into the dark abyss with only a headlamp… and spiders and bats for company. Lucki...

Qualys Threat Research Thursday

Welcome to the second edition of the Qualys Research Team’s “Threat Research Thursday”, where we collect and curate notable new tools, techniques, procedures, threat intelligence, cybersecurity news, malware attacks, and more. Feedback on our first edition, Introducing Qualys Threat Research...

Remediate Your Vulnerable Lenovo Systems with Qualys Custom Assessment and Remediation

Lenovo disclosed Multi-Vendor BIOS Security Vulnerabilities in September 2022 that affect multiple Lenovo devices. These are high severity vulnerabilities that have the potential of resulting in information disclosure, privilege escalation, and denial of service. Here are the related CVEs:...

Optimizing a Web Application Security Scan for bWAPP

Today almost all organizations have an online presence, with more information accessible at the click of a mouse, making customer experiences much more frictionless. Yet the delivery of great experiences also opens the door to potential hackers intent on compromising the website and its APIs...

Prepare Your Organization for Compliance with the NYDFS Cybersecurity Regulation

Cyberattacks are on the rise, with bad actors accelerating their nefarious exfiltration of valuable and confidential data from financial institutions, Federal agencies, healthcare organizations, and more. According to an IBM study, the Financial Services industry saw an increase in the cost of da...

Why Organizations Struggle with Patch Management (and What to Do about It)

The cybersecurity attack surface continues to grow exponentially. Modern technologies are being deployed on-premises and in the cloud as part of digital transformation journeys. Meanwhile, the current practice of identifying, classifying, prioritizing, and remediating vulnerabilities has become...

September 2022 Patch Tuesday | Microsoft Releases 63 Vulnerabilities with 5 Critical, plus 16 Microsoft Edge (Chromium-Based); Adobe Releases 7 Advisories, 63 Vulnerabilities with 35 Critical.

Microsoft Patch Tuesday Summary Microsoft has fixed 63 vulnerabilities aka flaws in the September 2022 update, including five 5 vulnerabilities classified as Critical as they allow Remote Code Execution RCE. This months Patch Tuesday fixes two 2 zero-day vulnerabilities, with one 1 actively...

Let Smart Automation Reduce the Risk of Zero-Day Attacks on Third-Party Applications

Last week, Google released yet another zero-day patch for its Chrome browser to fix a high-severity flaw that was already being exploited. That vulnerability CVE-2022-3075 is the sixth actively exploited zero-day found in Chrome this year. While users are grateful for the urgent patch, it was...

Let Smart Automation Reduce the Risk of Zero-Day Attacks on Third-Party Applications

Last week, Google released yet another zero-day patch for its Chrome browser to fix a high-severity flaw that was already being exploited. That vulnerability CVE-2022-3075 is the sixth actively exploited zero-day found in Chrome this year. While users are grateful for the urgent patch, it was...

Introducing Qualys Threat Research Thursdays

Welcome to the first edition of the Qualys Research Team’s “Threat Research Thursday” where we collect and curate notable new tools, techniques, procedures, threat intelligence, cybersecurity news, malware attacks, and more. We will endeavor to issue these update reports regularly, as often as...

An End-to-End Approach to Next-Gen Security for Web Applications & APIs

According to Verizon’s 2022 Data Breach Investigations Report, web applications remain both the top hacking vector and data breach pattern, accounting for roughly 70% of security incidents. This is because web applications are everywhere and easily probed for weaknesses. A vulnerability in any...

Mitigating the Risk of Zero-Day Vulnerabilities by using Compensating Controls

Zero-day vulnerability attacks have emerged as a major cybersecurity threat in the last few years. Organizations most often targeted include large enterprises and government/Federal agencies. However, any organization, regardless of its size, business, or industry, is a potential target for...

Qualys VMDR Recognized as Best VM Solution by SC Awards 2022 & Leader by GigaOm

Qualys VMDR has been recognized for its commanding industry leadership by both the 2022 SC Awards and analyst firm GigaOm. SC Magazine has chosen Qualys VMDR as the winner of the Best Vulnerability Management Solution category in its SC Awards 2022. The SC Awards honors the best solutions in...

Atlassian Confluence: Questions for Confluence App Hardcoded Credentials Vulnerability (CVE-2022-26138)

Over the last few months, Atlassian Confluence has increasingly become a target for attackers. In June 2022, a critical severity OGNL Remote Code Execution vulnerability was disclosed CVE-2022-26134. More recently, CVE-2022-26138 was disclosed on social media platforms in July 2022. In...

AsyncRAT C2 Framework: Overview, Technical Analysis & Detection

In this blog we describe the AsyncRAT C2 command & control Framework, which allows attackers to remotely monitor and control other computers over a secure encrypted link. We provide an overview of this threat, a technical analysis, and a method of detecting the malware using Qualys Multi-Vector...

Qualys Security Updates: Cloud Agent for Linux

The security and protection of our customers is of the utmost importance to Qualys, as is transparency whenever issues arise. A customer responsibly disclosed two scenarios related to the Qualys Cloud Agent: 1. For the first scenario, we added supplementary safeguards for signatures running on...

August 2022 Patch Tuesday | Microsoft Releases 121 Vulnerabilities with 17 Critical, plus 20 Microsoft Edge (Chromium-Based); Adobe Releases 5 Advisories, 25 Vulnerabilities with 15 Critical.

Microsoft Patch Tuesday Summary Microsoft has fixed 121 vulnerabilities aka flaws in the August 2022 update, including 17 vulnerabilities classified as Critical as they allow Elevation of Privilege EoP and Remote Code Execution RCE. This months Patch Tuesday fixes two 2 zero-day vulnerabilities,...

Know Your ServiceNow and Qualys Integrations

If you are a current ServiceNow customer interested in cybersecurity, this blog is for you. If you are a Qualys customer who also uses ServiceNow, this blog is for you too. ServiceNow and Qualys have enjoyed a multi-year partnership, being two of the premier SaaS vendors covering the IT and...

A Deep Dive into VMDR 2.0 with Qualys TruRisk™

The old way of ranking vulnerabilities doesn’t work anymore. Instead, enterprise security teams need to rate the true risks to their business. In this blog, we examine each of the risk scores delivered by Qualys TruRisk, the criteria used to compute them, and how they can be used to prioritize...

Qualys API Best Practices: CyberSecurity Asset Management API

The Qualys Security Blog’s API Best Practices Series is designed for Qualys customer programmers or stakeholders with a general knowledge of programming who want to implement best practices to improve development, design, and performance of their programs that use the Qualys API. For non-customer...

Introducing CyberSecurity Asset Management 2.0 with Natively Integrated External Attack Surface Management

Qualys is introducing Qualys CyberSecurity Asset Management 2.0, which now delivers natively integrated External Attack Surface Management EASM to enable Cybersecurity teams to identify any and all assets visible on the internet, including previously unknown assets and any potential security...

Here’s a Simple Script to Detect the Stealthy Nation-State BPFDoor

In this blog, the Qualys Research Team explains the mechanics of a Linux malware variant named BPFdoor. We then demonstrate the efficacy of Qualys Custom Assessment and Remediation to detect it, and Qualys Multi-Vector EDR to protect against it. BPFDoor is a Linux/Unix backdoor that allows threat...

New Qualys Research Report: Evolution of Quasar RAT

The Qualys Threat Research Team continues to inform enterprise cybersecurity teams of emerging threats that could impact their business. These threat intelligence reports summarize individual threat exploits and provide practical recommendations for protecting against them. In this free research...

Attack Surface Management: a Critical Pillar of Cybersecurity Asset Management

In their recent Innovation Insight for Attack Surface Management report, Gartner calls Attack Surface Management or “ASM”, for short the first pillar in a broader Exposure Management strategy. According to Gartner, ASM addresses the questions: What does my organization look like from an attacker’...

Join Qualys at Black Hat USA 2022!

Need to get more security? As a Titanium Sponsor of Black Hat USA 2022 Qualys will be located front and center in Booth 1320 on the show floor. Stop by and visit us to learn about our latest techniques, best practices, and solutions for risk-based vulnerability management, external attack surface...

Aflac Reduces Critical Vulnerabilities by 55% with Qualys VMDR 2.0 with TruRisk

The following is a guest blog by Aflac, a Qualys VMDR customer, on their recent experience completing a Proof of Concept project for the newly release VMDR 2.0 with Qualys TruRisk. About Aflac Aflac Inc. NYSE: AFL is an insurance leader and the largest provider of supplemental insurance in the...

Integrating JIRA to the Qualys Cloud Platform

This is the second in a blog series on integrations to the Qualys Cloud Platform. This post looks at what are the requirements to build a successful integration and workarounds when some of the pieces are missing functionality. We then specifically consider the question of integrated Qualys with...

Use Qualys ­­Flow to Automate Detection & Remediation with No-code Workflows

The threat landscape is rapidly and constantly evolving. New software vulnerabilities and service misconfigurations are discovered daily, and exploits targeting them are often released within hours. For effective security, pursuing the automation of both detection and remediation processes is...