Black Hole Exploit Kit 2.0 Released

The developer behind the notorious Black Hole exploit kit has released a new version of the software, adding in several new features designed to prevent security researchers from getting access to new exploits or reverse-engineering the kit’s inner workings. Conveniently, the pricing for Black Ho...

Microsoft to Fix 28 Vulnerabilities in June Patch Tuesday

Microsoft has been busy of late, what with the scramble surrounding the Flame malware and the forged certificate that the attackers were able to use to spread the malware via a fake Windows Update service. Now, the company is planning to release seven bulletins next Tuesday covering 28...

Patch Tuesday: Microsoft Kills Pwn2Own Browser Bug

The Microsoft Patch Tuesday train rolled into town today, dropping off a massive 10 security bulletins with fixes for at least 34 documented vulnerabilities. Three of the bulletins are rated “critical” because of the risk of remote code execution attacks. Affected products include the Windows...

SAP Kicks Log4Shell Vulnerability Out of 20 Apps

SAP has identified 32 apps that are affected by CVE-2021-44228 – the critical vulnerability in the Apache Log4j Java-based logging library that’s been under active attack since last week. As of yesterday, Patch Tuesday, the German software maker reported that it’s already patched 20 of those apps...

MFA Glitch Leads to 6K+ Coinbase Customers Getting Robbed

The accounts of at least 6,000 Coinbase customers were robbed of funds after attackers bypassed the cryptocurrency exchange’s multi-factor authentication MFA. According to a notification letter PDF – seen and posted by BleepingComputer, which first reported the story – that Coinbase sent to...

Hacker Leaks More Than 500K Telnet Credentials for IoT Devices

A hacker has published a list of credentials for more than 515,000 servers, home routers and other Internet of Things IoT devices online on a popular hacking forum in what’s being touted as the biggest leak of Telnet passwords to date, according to a published report. The leak—revealed in a repor...

WhatsApp Remote Code Execution Triggered by Videos

Facebook has quietly patched a vulnerability in the popular WhatsApp messaging platform, which could be exploited to launch remote-code-execution or denial-of-service attacks on victims. Attackers can exploit the flaw merely by sending a target user a video — specifically, a specially crafted MP4...

Encrypted Emails on macOS Found Stored in Unprotected Way

A database on Apple’s macOS computers is storing emails that are supposed to be protected with encryption as readable files, a problem of which the company has been aware for months and still has yet to solve, according to a researcher. Apple IT specialist Bob Gendler discovered the problem while...

Twitter Uses Phone Numbers, Emails to Sell Ads

Twitter has acknowledged that user phone numbers and email addresses gathered for security purposes, as part of its two-factor authentication policy, may have been used to sell ads. It calls the move an accident. The revelation is being widely criticized for its obvious breach of user privacy,...

Insider Threats Are Rising – But They Shouldn’t Be

There’s never been a shortage of risk that organizations face from insiders gone bad — those incidents where insiders steal information from their employers, clients, partners and government agencies. Many times, malicious insiders seek monetary gain. They’ll steal information such as account...

Amazon Alexa, Google Home Are On a Collision Course With Regulation

Voice assistants are growing rapidly in popularity — but at the same time, the privacy concerns and security issues with popular home assistant devices like Amazon Echo and Google Home are peaking too. Earlier in July, Amazon came under fire after acknowledging that it retains the voice recording...

Bluetooth Flaws Could Allow Global Tracking of Apple, Windows 10 Devices

Vulnerabilities in the way Bluetooth Low Energy is implemented on devices by manufacturers can open the door to global device tracking for the Windows 10, iOS and macOS devices that incorporate it, according to research from Boston University. An academic team at BU uncovered the flaws, which exi...

Massive Malvertising Campaign Reaches 100M Ads, Manipulates Supply Chain

A Hong Kong-based advertiser has mounted a snowballing campaign, compromising more than 100 million ads to date by forming relationships with legitimate ad platforms to gain access to premium audiences. From there, it often pushes malware onto victim machines. The malvertiser, operating under the...

Critical Flaws in Khan Academy Opened Door to Account Takeovers

Two critical cross-site request forgery CSRF flaws in educational non-profit Khan Academy’s website may have affected some users by allowing account takeover. Khan Academy, a non-profit learning organization, produces short lessons in the form of videos that can be accessed online. The two critic...

Oracle Squashes 53 Critical Bugs in April Security Update

Oracle is urging customers to patch critical vulnerabilities in its products as part of its massive April update, which fixes a whopping 297 flaws. Of those flaws, 53 vulnerabilities in Oracle products had a CVSS score of 9.0 or higher, making them “critical” severity – and in fact, 49 of those...

Microsoft Patches .NET Zero Day Vulnerability in September Update

An actively exploited zero-day vulnerability tied to Microsoft’s .NET framework is one of 25 critical and 54 important vulnerabilities fixed by Microsoft in its September Patch Tuesday security bulletin. According to Microsoft, the .NET framework vulnerability CVE-2017-8759 allows attackers to...

Apache Foundation Refutes Involvement in Equifax Breach

A group of developers behind Apache Struts, believed by some to be the culprit behind last week’s Equifax breach, took umbrage with those claims over the weekend. René Gielen, vice president of the Apache Struts Project Management Committee PMC at the Apache Software Foundation, wrote Saturday th...

Tools Used by Lamberts APT Found in Vault 7 Dumps

Links have emerged connecting targeted attacks going back a decade against high-profile government, industrial and financial targets around the world to hacking tools and documents leaked in the Vault 7 dump. Researchers at Kaspersky Lab today published a technical report on the activities of a...

Critical MySQL Vulnerabilities Can Lead to Server Compromise

Critical vulnerabilities in MySQL and vendor deployments by database servers MariaDB and PerconaDB have been identified that can lead to arbitrary code execution, root privilege escalation and server compromise. Dawid Golunski of Legal Hackers published details around two proof-of-concept exploit...

Microsoft Releases EMET 5.0 Exploit Mitigation Tool

The latest version of Microsoft’s freely available stopgap against zero-day exploits was released today with two new exploit mitigations and a batch of new configuration options. The update to Microsoft’s Enhanced Mitigation Experience Tool kit, or EMET, comes six months after a technical preview...

The Inside Story of the Kelihos Botnet Takedown

Earlier this week, Microsoft released an announcement about the disruption of a dangerous botnet that was responsible for spam messages, theft of sensitive financial information, pump-and-dump stock scams and distributed denial-of-service attacks. Kaspersky Lab played a critical role in this botn...

Most Email Security Approaches Fail to Block Common Threats

On overwhelming number of security teams believe their email security systems to be ineffective against the most serious inbound threats, including ransomware. That’s according to a survey of business customers using Microsoft 365 for email commissioned by Cyren and conducted by Osterman Research...

MSHTML Flaw Exploited to Attack Russian Dissidents

A spearphishing campaign targeting Russian citizens and government entities that are not aligned with the actions of the Russian government is the latest in numerous threats that have emerged since Russia invaded the Ukraine in February. Researchers from MalwareBytes identified a campaign last we...

Microsoft Translation Bugs Open Edge Browser to Trivial UXSS Attacks

Microsoft patched two bugs in its Chromium-based Edge browser last week, one of which could be used by an attacker to bypass security and to remotely inject and execute arbitrary code on any website just by sending a message. That security-bypassing bug, CVE-2021-34506, is rated CVSS 5.4, or...

Hezbollah-Linked Lebanese Cedar APT Infiltrates Hundreds of Servers

Advanced persistent threat APT group Lebanese Cedar has compromised at least 250 public-facing servers since early 2020, researchers said, with its latest malware. The group has added new features to its custom “Caterpillar” webshell and the “Explosive RAT” remote access trojan RAT, both of which...

Japanese Aerospace Firm Kawasaki Warns of Data Breach

Japanese aerospace company Kawasaki Heavy Industries on Monday warned of a security incident that may have led to unauthorized access of customer data. According to the company’s data breach notification, it first discovered unauthorized parties accessing a server in Japan, from an overseas offic...

Wormable, Unpatched Microsoft Bug Threatens Corporate LANs

UPDATE Microsoft released an emergency out-of-band patch to fix a SMBv3 wormable bug on Thursday that leaked earlier this week. The a patch for the vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2020-0796, is now rolling out to Windows 10 and Windows Server 2019 systems worldwide, according to Microsoft. On...

Website, Know Thyself: What Code Are You Serving?

When we think of “securing our website” from attackers, we often think of securing against hooded figures somewhere in Eastern Europe working out of a smoky office above an illegal gambling den. Not only is that probably geographically insensitive, it’s also not necessarily the best way threat to...

LastPass Fixes Bug That Leaks Credentials

LastPass has patched a bug that could potentially allow malicious websites to access a web user’s credentials from a previously visited site. Tavis Ormandy, a vulnerability researcher from Google Project Zero, discovered the flaw in the LastPass password manager and published it on the project’s...

Microsoft SHA-2 Advisory Causing 'Infinite Loop' Issues

Problems with a security update issued this week by Microsoft have surfaced on a number of technology forums. Windows users say Microsoft Security Advisory 303929, which adds SHA-2 code-signing and verification support for Windows 7 client machines and Windows Server 2008 R2 boxes, is causing...

Attacks on SCADA, ICS Honeypots Modified Critical Operations

With antiquated gear running the country’s industrial control systems that oversee critical infrastructure, it’s no shock attackers targeting SCADA networks do their fair share of reconnaissance looking for weak spots in that equipment. A researcher decided to put that theory to a practical test...

Microsoft Plans To Fix 16 Vulnerabilities With July Patch Release

Microsoft has announced it will issue nine bulletins for its July Patch Tuesday release next week. Included in the update are three critical patches for security holes that, if left unaddressed, could result in remote code execution on vulnerable systems. In all, the Redmond, Washington company...

Microsoft Names Chinese Firm Hangzhou DPTech as Source of RDP Code Leak

Two months after exploit code the Microsoft RDP MS12-020 vulnerability made its way into the open before the company released a patch, Microsoft has put the blame for the leak on a Chinese security company, Hangzhou DPTech Technologies. Microsoft said Thursday that it has removed the company from...

Ryan Naraine on Exploit Mitigations and the MS12-020 RDP Bug

Dennis Fisher talks with Ryan Naraine about whether exploit mitigations such as ASLR and DEP really make any difference in preventing browser attacks and the seriousness of the MS12-020 RDP vulnerability that was patched during March’s Patch Tuesday release. Podcast audio courtesy of sykboy65...

Attackers Pounce on Microsoft FTP in IIS Vulnerability

Less than a week after the publication of exploit code for a gaping hole in the FTP Service in Microsoft Internet Information Services IIS, attackers are launching what is described as “limited attacks” against Windows users. Microsoft has updated its security advisory to warn of the new attacks...

Critical Firefox Zero-Day Bugs Allow RCE, Sandbox Escape

Mozilla has released an emergency update for its Firefox browser that addresses two critical security vulnerabilities that cybercriminals have actively exploited in the wild as zero days. Both are use-after-free bugs, which are memory-corruption issues that occur when an application continues to...

Toyota to Close Japan Plants After Suspected Cyberattack

What was potentially a cyberattack hit one of Toyota’s parts suppliers, causing the company to move to shut down about a third of the company’s global production tomorrow, the company announced on Monday. Toyota doesn’t know how long the 14 plants will be unplugged. The closure will mean that the...

Pair of Google Chrome Zero-Day Bugs Actively Exploited

Google has addressed two zero-day security bugs that are being actively exploited in the wild. As part of the internet giant’s latest stable channel release version 93.0.4577.82 for Windows, Mac and Linux, it fixed 11 total vulnerabilities, all of them rated high-severity. The two zero days are...

Kaseya Patches Zero-Days Used in REvil Attacks

Kaseya made good on its promise to issue patches by July 11. On Saturday, the company behind the Virtual System/Server Administrator VSA platform that got walloped by the REvil ransomware-as-a-service RaaS gang in a massive supply-chain attack released urgent updates to address critical zero-day...

Millions of Connected Cameras Open to Eavesdropping

Millions of connected security and home cameras contain a critical software vulnerability that can allow remote attackers to tap into video feeds, according to a warning from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA. The bug CVE-2021-32934, with a CVSS v3 base score of 9.1 has be...

Raft of Exim Security Holes Allow Linux Mail Server Takeovers

A veritable cornucopia of security vulnerabilities in the Exim mail server have been uncovered, some of which could be chained together for unauthenticated remote code execution RCE, gaining root privileges and worm-style lateral movement, according to researchers. The Qualys Research Team has...

Accellion FTA Zero-Day Attacks Tied to Clop, FIN11

Researchers have identified a set of threat actors dubbed UNC2546 and UNC2582 with connections to the FIN11 and the Clop ransomware gang as the cybercriminal group behind the global zero-day attacks on users of the Accellion legacy File Transfer Appliance product. Click to Register Multiple...

Microsoft Patches 26 Critical Bugs in Big March Update

Microsoft tackled 115 bug fixes as part of its March Patch Tuesday update – 26 rated critical and 88 rated medium severity. The bugs patched span its product catalog, from Azure DevOps to Windows 10. This month’s haul is notable in its quantity and that there are only a few stand-out bugs causing...

Dell, HP Memory-Access Bugs Open Attacker Path to Kernel Privileges

Vulnerabilities in Dell and HP laptops could allow an attacker to access information and gain kernel privileges via the devices’ Direct Memory Access DMA capability. DMA is a processing-efficiency approach for peripherals such as PCI cards or network interface cards that, as the name suggests,...

Maze Ransomware Behind Pensacola Attack, Data Breach Looms

The Maze ransomware is likely the culprit behind the recently reported cyberattack on Pensacola, Fla. that occurred earlier this week, which downed systems citywide. In an email sent to county commissioners, IT administrators said that the Florida Department of Law Enforcement said that the...

News Wrap: GandCrab Operators Resurface, Utilities Firms Hit By LookBack Malware

On this week’s news wrap podcast, Threatpost editors Tara Seals and Lindsey O’Donnell break down the top news, including: Despite claiming they were retiring, GandCrab’s authors have been linked to the REvil/Sodinokibi ransomware via a technical analysis. A spearphishing campaign, first spotted i...

Payment Card Breach Hits 8 Cities Using Vulnerable Bill Portal

A vulnerable municipality payment software, which previously led to the breach of hundreds of thousands of payment cards in 2017, has been targeted once again. This time it was part of a breach involving of eight cities in August. The hack targets a flaw in Click2Gov software, which is used in...

Smart TVs, Subscription Services Leak Data to Facebook, Google

Smart TVs and so-called “over the top” OTT platforms are the latest IoT devices found “spying” on users and leaking sensitive data to companies such as Facebook, Amazon, Google and Netflix, according to two separate studies conducted by university researchers as well as independent research done ...

DEF CON 2019: Researchers Demo Hacking Google Home for RCE

LAS VEGAS – The Tencent Blade Team of researchers demonstrated several ways they have developed to hack and run remote code on Google Home smart speakers. The hacks center around what is known as a Magellan vulnerability, which can be used to exploit the massively popular SQLite database engine...

Amazon Admits Alexa Voice Recordings Saved Indefinitely

Amazon has acknowledged that it retains the voice recordings and transcripts of customers’ interactions with its Alexa voice assistant indefinitely. The admission raises questions about how long companies should be able to save highly-personal data collected from voice assistant devices. After U....