Apple Patches Three Actively Exploited Zero-Days, Part of iOS Emergency Update

Apple continues to put out potential security fires by patching zero-day vulnerabilities, releasing an emergency update this week to patch three more recently discovered in iOS after a major software update in November already fixed three that were being actively exploited. The newly patched bugs...

The Dark Sides of Modern Cars: Hacking and Data Collection

Like an unstoppable incoming tide, connectivity has quietly inundated the automobiles we so love to drive. In less than a decade, amazing driver-assist mechanisms and must-have infotainment systems have swept into the dashboards of many popular car models for sale today. And we’re just at the sta...

Malware Dropper Built to Target European Energy Company

A malware dropper with designs on specific targets was found in a private underground forum and is likely the predecessor to the Furtim malware that was uncovered in May. Researchers at SentinelOne today published a report that says the dropper sample they investigated, which they’re calling SFG,...

Proofpoint Warns Of New MSIL/Crimson Tied To Cyber Espionage

Diplomats and military personnel in India have been victimized in targeted espionage attacks that use a number of means of infection including phishing and watering hole sites. Researchers at Proofpoint this week published a report on Operation Transparent Tribe, which was ongoing as of Feb. 11...

GitHub Doubles Maximum Bug Bounty Payouts

Almost a year to the day since Github announced its bug bounty program, the Git repository said yesterday that it will double its maximum payout to $10,000. Ben Toews, a GitHub staffer, said yesterday that since the launch of the GitHub Security Bug Bounty, 73 previously unknown vulnerabilities...

Faulty Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 Patch Pulled Back

Microsoft announced Wednesday afternoon that it has pulled MS13-061, one of the patches issued yesterday for vulnerabilities in Exchange Server 2013. Microsoft said the patch is causing issues with the content index for mailbox databases. Organizations would still be able to send and receive emai...

Fake Windows 8 Key Generators Found Tricking Users

Attackers continue to exploit the buzz behind the launch of Windows 8, Microsoft’s latest operating system. The latest attack attempts to trick users into using fake key generators that claim they’ll install the software to computers free of charge. Key generators, or keygens, are programs that...

Brand-New Log4Shell Attack Vector Threatens Local Hosts

Defenders will once again be busy beavers this weekend: There’s an alternative attack vector for the ubiquitous Log4j vulnerability, which relies on a basic Javascript WebSocket connection to trigger remote code-execution RCE on servers locally, via drive-by compromise. In other words, an exploit...

Ryuk Ransomware Attack Sprung by Frugal Student

A European biomolecular research institute involved in COVID-19 research lost a week’s worth of research data, all thanks to a Ryuk ransomware attack traced back to a student trying to save money by buying unlicensed software. Security researchers at Sophos described the attack in a report...

Data from 500M LinkedIn Users Posted for Sale Online

Personal data from more than 500 million LinkedIn users has been posted for sale online in yet another incident of threat actors scraping data from public profiles and slinging it online for potential cybercriminal misuse. Hackers posted an archive containing data they said includes LinkedIn IDs,...

Exchange Cyberattacks Escalate as Microsoft Rolls One-Click Fix

As dangerous attacks accelerate against Microsoft Exchange Servers in the wake of the disclosure around the ProxyLogon group of security bugs, a public proof-of-concept PoC whirlwind has started up. It’s all leading to a feeding frenzy of cyber-activity. The good news, however, is that Microsoft...

Google, Intel Warn on 'Zero-Click' Kernel Bug in Linux-Based IoT Devices

Google and Intel are warning of a high-severity flaw in BlueZ, the Linux Bluetooth protocol stack that provides support for core Bluetooth layers and protocols to Linux-based internet of things IoT devices. Click to Register! According to Google, the vulnerability affects users of Linux kernel...

Critical DNS Bug Opens Windows Servers to Infrastructure Takeover

A critical Microsoft Windows Server bug opens company networks to hackers, allowing them to potentially seize control of IT infrastructures. Microsoft issued a patch for the bug on Tuesday as part of its July Patch Tuesday roundup. It turns out that the bug is 17 years old. Impacted are Windows...

Black Hat USA, DEF CON 28 Go Virtual

Cybersecurity conferences Black Hat USA and DEF CON 28 will not be held in person this year due to the coronavirus pandemic. The conferences will both instead be transformed into completely virtualized events. Both back-to-back annual conferences were set to take place in Las Vegas this year; Bla...

Citrix Accelerates Patch Rollout For Critical RCE Flaw

Citrix has quickened its rollout of patches for a critical vulnerability CVE-2019-19781 in the Citrix Application Delivery Controller ADC and Citrix Gateway products, on the heels of recent proof-of-concept exploits and skyrocketing exploitation attempts. Several versions of the products still...

PoC Exploits Published For Microsoft Crypto Bug

Two proof-of-concept PoC exploits have been publicly released for the recently-patched crypto-spoofing vulnerability found by the National Security Agency and reported to Microsoft. The vulnerability CVE-2020-0601 could enable an attacker to spoof a code-signing certificate necessary for validati...

BlueKeep Attacks Have Arrived, Are Initially Underwhelming

The wave of BlueKeep attacks that security experts predicted could take down systems globally have arrived, but they are not in showing the form nor the destructive impact experts initially feared. Security researchers have seen evidence of the first wave of attacks on the zero-day Windows Remote...

Post-Perimeter Security: Addressing Evolving Mobile Enterprise Threats

In the era of the cloud, enterprises house sensitive corporate data outside of the traditional perimeter; employees can access this from any endpoint, including mobile devices, and from any network. This presents a host of new challenges for companies looking to protect their sensitive informatio...

Threatpost News Wrap Podcast For Jan. 25

Threatpost editors Tom Spring, Tara Seals and Lindsey O’Donnell discuss the biggest news from this week. That includes a rare “emergency directive” issued by the Department of Homeland Security on Tuesday, which warned that multiple government domains have been targeted by DNS hijacking attacks...

Alleged Mariposa Botmaster in Court

One of the men authorities allege to have been behind the massive–and now dead–Mariposa botnet, has gone on trial in Slovenia, more than two years after the initial arrests and takedown of the network. Mariposa was one of the first handful of botnets that authorities and security researchers work...

Four-Year-Old Critical Linux Wi-Fi Bug Allows System Compromise

A critical Linux bug has been discovered that could allow attackers to fully compromise vulnerable machines. A fix has been proposed but has not yet been incorporated into the Linux kernel. The flaw CVE-2019-17666, which was classified as critical in severity, exists in the “rtlwifi” driver, whic...

ThreatList: DMARC Adoption Nonexistent at 80% of Orgs

About 80 percent of company web domains don’t have standard email authentication protections in place. That’s according to 250ok’s Global DMARC Adoption 2019 report, which analyzed 25,700 domains in the education, e-commerce, legal, financial services, SaaS and nonprofit sectors, as well as the...

Publicly Attacked Microsoft IIS Zero Day Unlikely to be Patched

Microsoft is unlikely to patch a zero-day vulnerability in an older version of its Internet Information Services IIS webserver that’s been publicly attacked since last July and August. Two researchers from the South China University of Technology in Guangzhou posted a proof-of-concept exploit for...

Microsoft Submits Tracking Protection Proposal to W3C

Microsoft has submitted its proposal for web tracking protection to the W3C for consideration as a standard, hoping to get the organization’s stamp of approval for its browser privacy technology. The proposal is in the earliest stages of the process and has not been approved, a process that can...

The Rise of the Rogue AV Testers

By Costin Raiu Recently, I was sitting around with a number of colleagues from Kaspersky Lab, discussing everybody’s favorite subject: the state of anti-virus testing these days. During the talks, somebody brought up the name of a new, obscure testing organization in the Far East. Nobody else had...

Euros Football Fever Nets Dumb Passwords

The European soccer championship a.k.a. the Euros is stoking maximum football fever, which has slopped over into easy-to-crack passwords. Such as, say, “football.” That password is of course easy as pie to crack via a dictionary attack – a type of brute-force attack that involves trying thousands...

Prometei Botnet Could Fire Up APT-Style Attacks

A heretofore little-seen botnet dubbed Prometei is taking a page from advanced persistent threat APT cyberattackers: The malware is exploiting two of the Microsoft Exchange vulnerabilities collectively known as ProxyLogon, in order to drop a Monero cryptominer on its targets. It’s also highly...

SAP Bugs Under Active Cyberattack

Active cyberattacks on known vulnerabilities in SAP systems could lead to full control of unsecured SAP applications, researchers are warning. Adversaries are carrying out a range of attacks, according to an alert from SAP and security firm Onapsis issued Tuesday – including theft of sensitive...

IBM Squashes Critical Remote Code-Execution Flaw

IBM has patched a critical buffer-overflow error that affects Big Blue’s Integration Designer toolset, which helps enterprises create business processes that integrate applications and data. If exploited, the flaw could enable remote code execution. Click to Register The flaw CVE-2020-27221 has a...

Dangerous Kubernetes Bugs Allow Authentication Bypass, DoS

A pair of bugs in the Kubernetes open-source cloud container software can be “highly dangerous” under some Kubernetes configurations, according to researchers. The flaws, CVE-2019-16276 and CVE-2019-11253, have been patched in Kubernetes builds 1.14.8, 1.15.5 and 1.16.2. Exploitation of the first...

Google Warns of Android Zero-Day Bug Under Active Attack

Google is warning of an Android zero-day flaw actively being exploited in the wild, which gives an attacker full control over 18 phone models including its flagship Pixel handset and devices made by Samsung, Huawei and Xiaomi. Google’s Project Zero warned late Thursday that it suspected the...

News Wrap: Amazon Echo Privacy, Facebook FTC Fines and Biometrics Regulation

Data privacy has been an outstanding theme this past week, and the Threatpost team discussed the biggest privacy related news. In the news wrap podcast for April 26, the team discussed the backstories behind several reports from the week, including: Facebook potentially facing Federal Trade...

Millions of Android Users Scammed in SMS Fraud Driven by Tik-Tok Ads

Threat actors are using malicious Android apps to scam users into signing up for a bogus premium SMS subscription service, which results in big charges accruing on their phone bills. Jakub Vavra from the threat operations team of security firm Avast uncovered the campaign, which he dubbed UltimaS...

Office for Mac Users Warned of Malicious SYLK Files

Microsoft Office for Mac users are being warned that malicious SYLK files are sneaking past endpoint defenses even when the “disable all macros without notification” is turned on. This leaves systems vulnerable to a remote, unauthenticated attackers who can execute arbitrary code. The warning com...

Critical DoS Bug Bubbles Up in Facebook Fizz TLS 1.3 Project

A critical denial-of-service DoS vulnerability in Facebook’s open-source implementation of the transport layer security TLS 1.3 protocol could cause an infinite loop – thus disrupting any web service that relies on it. Kevin Backhouse, a researcher at Semmle, discovered the bug in the project...

Phishing Scam Cloaks Malware With Fake Google reCAPTCHA

A recently-discovered phishing scam was found peddling malware, using a new technique to mask its malicious landing page: A fake Google reCAPTCHA system. The campaign targeted a Polish bank and its users with emails, said researchers with Sucuri. These emails contained a link to a malicious PHP...

PyRoMine Uses NSA Exploit for Monero Mining and Backdoors

The ShadowBrokers’ release of a trove of National Security Agency exploits last year appears to be the gift that keeps on giving, to the hacker community at least: A fresh malware that uses the EternalRomance tool has hit the scene, with Monero-mining as the stated goal. However, more damaging...

April VMware Bugs Abused to Deliver Mirai Malware, Exploit Log4Shell

Recently reported VMware bugs are being used by hackers who are focused on using them to deliver Mirai denial-of-service malware and exploit the Log4Shell vulnerability. Security researchers at Barracuda discovered that attempts were made to exploit the recent vulnerabilities CVE-2022-22954 and...

WordPress Patches 3-Year-Old High-Severity RCE Bug

WordPress released a 5.5.2 update to its ubiquitous web publishing software platform. The update patches a high-severity bug, which could allow a remote unauthenticated attacker to take over a targeted website via a narrowly tailored denial-of-service attack. In all, the WordPress Security and...

Adobe Patches Five Critical Illustrator CC Flaws

Adobe has released patches for five critical vulnerabilities in Adobe Illustrator CC, its popular vector graphics editor tool, which if exploited could enable arbitrary code execution. Overall Adobe patched nine vulnerabilities as part of its regularly-scheduled updates on Tuesday, including five...

Security Watch: Elon Musk's NeuraLink Links Brains to iPhones via Bluetooth

Technologist Elon Musk has unveiled a plan for embedding Bluetooth-enabled implants into a human brain, to enable disabled persons to regain motor and cognitive function. IT experts however noted that along with FDA approval, the idea faces hurdles in the form of significant scrutiny on the...

SEMrush Plugs Remote Code Execution Bug in Its SaaS Platform

UPDATE Search engine optimization and analytics firm SEMrush patched a remote code execution vulnerability that allowed an attacker to send a malicious image to its service and generate a reverse shell, a typical first stage in a cyberattack. Public disclosure of the vulnerability was Monday when...

Local Windows Admins Can Hijack Sessions Without Credentials

A researcher has exposed how attackers with local admin privileges could use native command-line Windows tools to hijack other users’ sessions without credentials. Researcher Alexander Korznikov on Friday published a report in which he describes how he could, locally and remotely via Remote Deskt...

Sofacy APT28 Gang Using New Backdoors, Zero Days

A new analysis of the Sofacy APT gang, a Russian-speaking group carrying out targeted attacks against military and government offices for close to a decade, shows a relentless wave of intrusions peaking this summer against victims in a number of NATO countries and the Ukraine. Researchers at...

Microsoft Invents New Way To Measure Online Safety (And Finds That Consumers Stink At It)

Computer users are taking steps to mitigate online security threats, but still only score a paltry 34 out of 100 – a solid “F” – according to a new study by Microsoft. The study, sponsored by Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing Group TwC, introduces a new metric, the Microsoft Computing Safety Inde...

Cybercriminals Swarm Windows Utility Regsvr32 to Spread Malware

A Windows living-off-the-land binary LOLBin known as Regsvr32 is seeing a big uptick in abuse of late, researchers are warning, mainly spreading trojans like Lokibot and Qbot. LOLBins are legitimate, native utilities used daily in various computing environments, that cybercriminals use to evade...

Microsoft Patches Actively Exploited Windows Zero-Day

In September’s Patch Tuesday crop of security fixes, Microsoft released patches for 66 CVEs, three of which are rated critical, and one of which – the Windows MSHTML zero-day – has been under active attack for nearly two weeks. One other bug is listed as publicly known but isn’t yet being...

Crypto Hack Earned Crooks $600 Million

Attackers reportedly stole $600 million from the cryptocurrency platform Poly Network, in what experts say is one of the largest crypto heists to date. Poly Network, a decentralized finance DeFi platform based in China, publicly acknowledged that an attacker “exploited a vulnerability” that allow...

‘PwnedPiper’: Devastating Bugs in >80% of Hospital Pneumatics

Researchers have discovered nine vulnerabilities – collectively dubbed PwnedPiper – in the pneumatic tube systems PTS used in more than 80 percent of major hospitals in North America. The bugs, in Swisslog Healthcare’s Translogic PTS, include hard-coded passwords, unencrypted connections and...

Safari Zero-Day Used in Malicious LinkedIn Campaign

Threat actors used a Safari zero-day flaw to send malicious links to government officials in Western Europe via LinkedIn before researchers from Google discovered and reported the vulnerability. That’s the word from researchers from Google Threat Analysis Group TAG and Google Project Zero, who...