Critical, Unpatched Cisco Flaw Leaves Small Business Networks Wide Open

A critical and unpatched vulnerability in the widely deployed Cisco Small Business Switch software leaves the door open to remote, unauthenticated attackers gaining full administrative control over the device – and therefore the network. Cisco Small Business Switches were developed for small offi...

Critical Zoom Flaw Lets Hackers Hijack Conference Meetings

A serious vulnerability in Zoom’s desktop conferencing application could allow a remote attacker to hijack screen controls and kick attendees out of meetings. Researchers at Tenable who on Thursday released a proof of concept exploit for the unauthorized command execution flaw said that bug exist...

Lock-Screen Bypass Bug Quietly Patched in Handsets

A design flaw affecting all in-display fingerprint sensors – that left over a half-dozen cellphone models vulnerable to a trivial lock-screen bypass attack – has been quietly patched. The flaw was tied to a bug in the popular in-display fingerprint reader technology used for user authentication...

Quant Loader Trojan Spreads Via Microsoft URL Shortcut Files

Researchers are warning of a new email phishing campaign that downloads and launches the Quant Loader trojan, capable of distributing ransomware and stealing passwords. Barracuda on Tuesday said it has been tracking emails containing zipped Microsoft internet shortcut files with a “.url” file...

AMD Acknowledges Vulnerabilities, Will Roll Out Patches In Coming Week

AMD on Tuesday acknowledged several vulnerabilities that had been previously reported in its Ryzen and EPYC chips, and said that it would roll out firmware patches for those flaws in the coming weeks. The response comes a week after Israel-based CTS-Labs said that it has discovered 13 critical...

Google Awards Record $112,500 Bounty for Android Exploit Chain

Prolific bug hunter Guang Gong has earned the highest-ever payout for a vulnerability in the history of Google’s Android Security Rewards program, which began in 2015. He earned a combined $112,500 for the disclosure of an Android exploit chain impacting Google’s Pixel handset that could allow an...

Oracle Issues Emergency Patches for ‘JoltandBleed’ Vulnerabilities

Oracle pushed out an emergency update for vulnerabilities affecting several of its products that rely on its proprietary Jolt protocol. The bugs were discovered by researchers at ERPScan who named the series of five vulnerabilities JoltandBleed. The vulnerabilities are severe, with two of the bug...

Factorization Flaw in TPM Chips Makes Attacks on RSA Private Keys Feasible

A flawed Infineon Technology chipset used on PC motherboards to securely store passwords, certificates and encryption keys risks undermining the security of government and corporate computers protected by RSA encryption keys. In a nutshell, the bug makes it possible for an attacker to calculate a...

Stack Clash Vulnerability in Linux, BSD Systems Enables Root Access

Linux, BSD, Solaris and other open source systems are vulnerable to a local privilege escalation vulnerability known as Stack Clash that allows an attacker to execute code at root. Major Linux and open source distributors have made patches available today, and systems running Linux, OpenBSD,...

Unpatched Western Digital Bugs Leave NAS Boxes Open to Attack

Western Digital Corporation network-attached storage owners were warned of critical flaws in the company’s My Cloud line of hardware that exposed data stored on the devices to attack. The flaws impact a dozen Western Digital drives that could allow remote adversaries to bypass logins, insert...

Docker Patches Privilege Escalation Vulnerability

Docker has patched a privilege escalation vulnerability CVE-2016-9962 that could lead to container escapes, allowing a hacker to affect operations of a host from inside a container. The vulnerability is rated high severity by some Linux distributions such as Arch Linux, which traces the problem t...

Microsoft Patches Five Zero Days Under Attack

Update: Microsoft today said it mislabeled CVE-2016-7189 in bulletin MS16-119 as exploited. “There is no evidence of any active attacks using this vulnerability and the bulletin text has been corrected.” – a Microsoft spokesperson said. Microsoft today patched a handful of zero-day vulnerabilitie...

Mozilla Patches Certificate Pinning Vulnerability in Firefox

As expected, Mozilla patched a highly scrutinized flaw in its automated update process for add-ons in Firefox, specifically around the expiration of certificate pins. The vulnerability allowed attackers to intercept encrypted browser traffic, inject a malicious NoScript extension update and gain...

Patched ColdFusion Flaw Exposes Applications to Attack

An Adobe ColdFusion vulnerability addressed Tuesday in a hotfix pushed to users put applications developed on the platform at risk to a number of serious issues. Researcher Dawid Golunski of Legal Hackers today revealed details on the flaw, which he privately disclosed to Adobe, as well as a...

LizardStresser IoT Botnets Part of 400Gbps DDoS Attacks

LizardStresser, a distributed denial of service botnet, has found new life leveraging hundreds of internet-based webcams in attacks against Brazilian-based banks, government agencies as well as a handful of U.S.-based gaming companies. Researchers at the Arbor’s Security Engineering and Response...

Conficker Used in New Wave of Hospital IoT Device Attacks

Internet-connected medical devices such as MRI machines, CT scanners and dialysis pumps are increasingly being targeted by hackers seeking to steal patient medical records from hospitals. Attackers consider the devices soft digital targets, seldom guarded with same security as client PCs and...

Exploit Kits Attacking Adobe Flash Player Zero Day

Update Exploits for the most recent Adobe Flash Player zero-day vulnerability have been integrated into the Angler, Neutrino and Magnitude exploit kits, and are leading compromised computers to different ransomware strains, banking malware, and a credential-stealing Trojan. A French researcher wh...

Android Qualcomm Vulnerability Impacts 60 Percent of Devices

A flaw in mobile chip maker Qualcomm’s mobile processor, used in 60 percent of Android devices, allows attackers to take control over a targeted phone or tablet under specific conditions. Researchers at Duo Labs said the vulnerability is tied to Android’s problem-plagued mediaserver, coupled with...

13 Million MacKeeper Records Found in Public Database

A trove of MacKeeper user data—some 13 million records—has been locked down after a researcher found an exposed and accessible database using a simple Shodan query. Chris Vickery revealed his discovery on Monday on Reddit in more of an appeal to reach officials at Kromtech, the parent company tha...

Exploit Kit Delivers Pharming Attacks Against SOHO Routers

Attacks targeting small office and home router DNS settings, long a target for network intruders seeking to redirect web traffic to malicious sites, have for the first time been included in an exploit kit—one that specializes in cross-site request forgery attacks. An exploit kit has been spotted ...

Flaw in Virtualization Software Could Lead to VM Escapes, Data Theft

Researchers have uncovered a vulnerability in an obscure component of many virtualization platforms that they say can allow an attacker to escape from a guest virtual machine and gain code execution on the host, as well as any other VMs operating on that machine. Experts say the bug affects a wid...

May 2015 Adobe Flash, Reader, Acrobat Security Updates

Adobe today released sizable updates for Flash Player, Reader and Acrobat, patching 18 and 34 vulnerabilities respectively in the software. None of the vulnerabilities in any of the three products, Adobe said, are being publicly exploited. The Flash Update for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux patches...

Google Fixes Dozens of Bugs in Chrome 42

Google has released Chrome 42, a major security upgrade to the browser that includes patches for 45 vulnerabilities. The latest version of Chrome carries with it fixes for a number of high-severity bugs, including a cross-origin bypass in the HTML parser. That vulnerability earned an anonymous...

Hilton Hotels Fix CSRF Vulnerability That Exposed All Accounts

A cross-site request forgery CSRF vulnerability in the website of hotel chain Hilton Worldwide could have inadvertently compromised much of its users’ personal information. Ironically the since-fixed issue stemmed from a promotion the chain was offering to users if they changed their passwords on...

Inside nls_933w.dll, the Equation APT Persistence Module

CANCUN – The names called out like beacons from the screen: Samsung; Seagate; Western Digital; Hitachi; Maxtor. Hardware makers were in the crosshairs of the Equation APT group and it was perhaps the worst possible scenario imagined by researchers looking at the frightening and extensive storehou...

Chinese Hackers Compromised Forbes.com Using IE, Flash Zero Days

A Chinese APT group was able to chain together two zero day vulnerabilities, one against Adobe’s Flash Player and one against Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 9, to compromise a popular news site late last year. The group’s aim was to gain access to computers at several U.S. defense and financial...

Two Cisco Products Vulnerable to POODLE Attack on TLS

Two of Cisco’s products are vulnerable to the POODLE attack via the TLS implementation in those products. The vulnerability affects Cisco’s Adaptive Security Appliance software and its Application Control Engine module. The POODLE attack was disclosed in October by researchers from Google, who...

Citadel Variant Targets Password Managers

The Citadel Trojan has once again branched out beyond its roots as banking malware and is now targeting the master passwords guarding major password management products. Researchers from IBM Trusteer today said they’ve notified makers of the nexus Personal Security Client, Password Safe and KeePa...

Researcher Warns of Critical Flaws in Oracle Servers

There are two vulnerabilities in some of Oracle’s older database packages that allow an attacker to access a remote server without a password and even view the server’s filesystem and dump arbitrary files. Oracle has not released a patch for one of the flaws, even though it was reported by a...

EE BrightBox Router Vulnerabilities Exposed

Leave it to a software test engineer to be thorough about his home networking gear. Scott Helme, an engineer in the U.K., likes to take a close look at traffic coming and going from new devices installed at his home. Recently, he signed up for fiber service from Everything Everywhere, an ISP in t...

Blackhole and Cool Exploit Kits Nearly Extinct

When authorities in Russia arrested Paunch, the alleged creator of the Blackhole exploit kit, last month, security researchers and watchers of the malware underground predicted that taking him off the board would put a dent in the use of Blackhole and force its customers onto other platforms. Six...

Microsoft Readies Eight Patches, IE Zero Day Fix

Microsoft has announced that it plans to release eight patches next week as part of its October Patch Tuesday release, addressing flaws in its Windows, the .NET Framework, Office, Server, Silverlight and most importantly its Internet Explorer browser. Four of the patches are marked critical,...

Researchers Ponder When to Notify Users of Public Vulnerability Exploits

BERLIN–Just whispering the words “vulnerability disclosure” within earshot of a security researcher or vendor security response team members can put you in fear for your life these days. The debate is so old and worn out that there is virtually nothing new left to say or chew on at this point...

Apple Patches Mass of Security Bugs in OS X and Safari

Apple has updated both OS X and its Safari browser, fixing a pile of security vulnerabilities, many of which can be used for remote code execution. The release of OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.4 includes patches for more than 30 bugs, most notably a set of fixes for vulnerabilities in Ruby, some of whi...

New Attacks Leverage Adobe Sandbox Bypass Against Uyghur Activists

Attackers with a control infrastructure based in China are leveraging the same vulnerability exploited by Miniduke to attack Uyghur and Tibetan activists with new exploits. Researchers at Kaspersky Lab and AlienVault discovered a spear phishing campaign targeting non-governmental activists with P...

Adobe Patches Sandbox Escape Vulnerability in Reader and Acrobat

Adobe today released a patch for two vulnerabilities being exploited in the wild that enabled attackers to pull off the first confirmed sandbox escape against Adobe Reader. The vulnerabilities CVE-2013-0640 and CVE-2013-0641 could cause a crash and allow an attacker to remotely run malware on a...

Vulnerability Patched in Schneider Electric ICS Gear

The Industrial Control System CERT released an advisory this week warning of a vulnerability in a popular sensor monitoring system used in a number of critical industries, including energy, water and manufacturing. Aaron Portnoy of Exodus Intelligence discovered the flaw in the Windows-based...

Apple Patches Java Flaws

Apple has released a patch that fixes a laundry list of vulnerabilities in Java after Oracle pushed out a fix for the technology for users of Windows and other platforms. The patch from Apple also completely disables the Java plugin in users’ browsers in order to prevent users from falling victim...

Cross-Platform Flaws a Boon For Attackers

Attackers and malware writers, like many other people, tend to specialize, honing their skills in one particular discipline in order to maximize their chances for success. But Microsoft researchers have come across a series of malware samples and exploits that show that some attackers are beginni...

Smashing the Linux Heap

MIAMI BEACH–There has been a lot of discussion and research in the last decade on exploiting heap overflows in various platforms, especially Windows. But one researcher has found that there is a heap allocator in the Linux kernel that is, as he describes it, “beautifully exploitable.” Meet SLOB...

Adobe Releases Patch for Flash Zero Day Hole in Reader, Acrobat

Adobe has released patches for its Reader and Acrobat products to plug a hole in the Flash Player that was first reported in March and is being used in attacks on the Internet. The company issued a security update on Thursday, APSB11-08, that repairs critical vulnerabilities in current versions o...

New Remotely Exploitable Bug Found in Internet Explorer

Another serious remotely exploitable bug in Internet Explorer has cropped up, this one related to the way that IE handles a specific DLL library on pages that reference CSS files. There also is publicly available exploit code for the new bug. The vulnerability was disclosed initially on the Full...

MS Confirms Windows 7 DoS Flaw

On the heels of last week’s release of exploit code for a crippling denial-of-service vulnerability in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, Microsoft has issued a security advisory to confirm the issue and offer pre-patch mitigations. The flaw, in the Microsoft Server Message Block SMB Protocol...

Messaging Apps Tapped as Platform for Cybercriminal Activity

Cybercriminals are tapping the built-in services of popular messaging apps like Telegram and Discord as ready-made platforms to help them perform their nefarious activity in persistent campaigns that threaten users, researchers have found. Threat actors are tapping the multi-feature nature of...

APTs Overwhelmingly Share Known Vulnerabilities Rather Than Attack O-Days

Most advanced persistent threat groups APTs use known vulnerabilities in their attacks against organizations, suggesting the need to prioritize faster patching rather than chasing zero-day flaws as a more effective security strategy, new research has found. Security researchers at the University ...

Low-rent RAT Worries Researchers

For about the price of a cup of Starbucks latte, a hacker is renting out a remote access trojan designed to backdoor targeted networks. Dubbed as Dark Crystal RAT or DCRat, the malware is being peddled online to hackers in Russian by a lone rookie malware writer with a penchant for cut-rate...

Zero-Trust For All: A Practical Guide

While “zero-trust architecture” has become a buzz phrase, there’s plenty of confusion as to what it actually is. Is it a concept? A standard? A framework? An actual set of technology platforms? According to security experts, it’s best described as a fresh mindset for approaching cybersecurity...

TrickBot Crashes Security Researchers’ Browsers in Latest Upgrade

Trojan titan TrickBot has added a striking anti-debugging feature that detects security analysis and crashes researcher browsers before its malicious code can be analyzed. The new anti-debugging feature was discovered by Security Intelligence analysts with IBM, who reported the emergence of a...

Adobe Cloud Abused to Steal Office 365, Gmail Credentials

Attackers are leveraging Adobe Creative Cloud to target Office 365 users with malicious links that appear to be coming legitimately from Cloud users but instead direct victims to a link that steals their credentials, researchers have discovered. Researchers from Avanan, a Check Point company, fir...

How to Buy Precious Patching Time as Log4j Exploits Fly

Sure, Apache got a patch out fast when the Log4j logging library vulnerability – aka Javageddon or “up there with Shellshock” – exploded last week. But emergency patches take days best-case scenario or weeks to install: plenty of time for attackers to do their worst. Which they lickety-split did,...