Critical Cisco ‘CDPwn’ Flaws Affect Millions of Devices

Cisco is issuing patches for five critical vulnerabilities that have been discovered in Cisco Discovery Protocol CDP, the info-sharing layer that maps all Cisco equipment on a network. Researchers at Armis say that the vulnerabilities, which they disclosed on Wednesday and collectively dubbed...

Microsoft Outlook for Android Bug Opens Door to XSS

Users of the Microsoft Outlook for Android app should update their apps to avoid a range of attacks. The bug CVE-2019-1460 would allow an attacker to perform cross-site scripting XSS attacks on the affected systems and run scripts in the security context of the current user, according to...

Cybercriminals Adding Sophistication to BEC Threats

Cybercriminals are boosting their game and employing new tactics to move up the chain of command with more sophisticated business email compromise BEC threats that pose a greater threat to organizations, according to a new report. Advanced BEC attacks–including impersonation attacks and CEO...

ThreatList: Amidst Data Breaches, Account Creation Fraud Soars in 2019

The first half of 2019 saw a 13 percent increase in fraudulent activity compared to the previous six months, with a spike in June representing the highest-volume bot attack that’s been recorded since 2016, according to an analysis from LexisNexis Risk Solutions. The firm’s report, with data glean...

Unpatched Windows Bug Allows Attackers to Spoof Security Dialog Boxes

A previously unknown bug in Microsoft Windows would allow an attacker to spoof Windows dialog boxes that surface when making changes to the Windows registry. This would allow an adversary to plant malware or make other nefarious changes in the registry while getting around Windows’ built-in...

RSAC 2019: Container Escape Hack Targets Vulnerable Linux Kernel

Researchers at CyberArk have created a proof-of-concept attack that allows adversaries to bypass container security, escape the container and compromise an entire host system. However, the attack scenario is limited, in that a successful attack depends on unpatched vulnerabilities to be present i...

Google Play Cracks Down on Malicious Apps

Google Play is ramping up its offensive against malicious apps, which have continued to plague the official app store for Android devices over the years. In a Wednesday post, Andrew Ahn, product manager at Google Play, said that the number of app submissions that were rejected on the app...

An End to Offensive Security Research? Unlikely

Many industries tend to run in identifiable cycles. Financial services, the auto industry, entertainment–they all have cycles. Because the security industry isn’t nearly as old as any of these, it hasn’t had much of a chance to establish such cycles. But one seems to be appearing now in the form ...

Top Six Security Bad Habits, and How to Break Them

Cybercrime is on the rise, and attacks are getting faster, more nuanced and increasingly sophisticated. The number of cyberattack-related data breaches rose 27 percent in 2021 — an upward trend that shows no signs of slowing down. Bad security habits, such as using the same password more than onc...

Apache Web Server Zero-Day Actively Exploited, Exposes Sensitive Data

Apache Software has quickly issued a fix for a zero-day security bug in the Apache HTTP Server, which was first reported to the project last week. The vulnerability is under active exploitation in the wild, it said, and could allow attackers to access sensitive information. According to a securit...

Colonial Pipeline Shells Out $5M in Extortion Payout, Report

Colonial Pipeline Co., operator of the largest U.S. fuel pipeline, reportedly paid $5 million to criminals behind a ransomware attack that has sent fuel prices spiking up and down the East Coast. Sources familiar with the payout told Bloomberg that representatives of Colonial Pipeline paid the...

80% of Global Enterprises Report Firmware Cyberattacks

Attacks against firmware are snowballing, outstripping many organizations’ cyber-defenses, according to a survey from Microsoft. The report showed that more than 80 percent of enterprises have experienced at least one firmware attack in the past two years – but only 29 percent of security budgets...

Laser-Based Hacking from Afar Goes Beyond Amazon Alexa

Imagine someone hacking into an Amazon Alexa device using a laser beam and then doing some online shopping using that person account. This is a scenario presented by a group of researchers who are exploring why digital home assistants and other sensing systems that use sound commands to perform...

Black Hat USA 2020: Critical Meetup.com Flaws Reveal Common AppSec Holes

Critical flaws in the popular Meetup platform were revealed Monday as part of research unleashed at this week’s Black Hat USA 2020. The flaws, which have been patched, enable the full takeover of Meetup “Groups” by threat actors, who can also redirects payments and carryout other malicious action...

News Wrap: Microsoft Sway Phish, Malicious GIF and Spyware Attacks

Threatpost editors Tom Spring, Tara Seals and Lindsey O’Donnell-Welch talk about the biggest news stories of the week ended May 1, including: A “PhantomLance” espionage campaign discovered targeting specific Android victims, mainly in Southeast Asia — which could be the work of the OceanLotus APT...

2020 Cybersecurity Trends to Watch

The wheels of 2020’s biggest cybersecurity threats have already been set motion. Mobile, the cloud and artificial intelligence, to name a few, are trends that will continue to be exploited by criminals. Couple that with the rapid growth of software development and a cybersecurity skills shortage...

Adobe Unscheduled Update Fixes Critical ColdFusion Flaws

Adobe has issued an unscheduled security update that fixes two critical flaws in its ColdFusion product. The critical vulnerabilities could enable an attacker to either execute arbitrary code or bypass access control on impacted systems. Overall, Adobe released three patches – one for an...

Malicious Ad Blockers for Chrome Caught in Ad Fraud Scheme

Google has removed two malicious ad blockers from its Chrome Web Store after a researcher discovered they were carrying out ad fraud and deceived Chrome users by using names of legitimate and popular blockers. Researcher Andrey Meshkov from rival ad blocker maker AdGuard discovered that the...

Oracle Warns of New Actively-Exploited WebLogic Flaw

Oracle said that a critical remote code execution flaw in its WebLogic Server is being actively exploited in the wild. The remote code execution flaw CVE-2019-2729 impacts a number of versions of Oracle’s WebLogic Server, used for building and deploying enterprise applications. The vulnerability...

Cisco Starts Patching Firmware Bug; Millions of Devices Still Vulnerable

Cisco has issued a handful of firmware releases for a high-severity vulnerability in Cisco’s proprietary Secure Boot implementation that impacts millions of its hardware devices, across the scope of its portfolio. The patches are the first in a planned series of firmware updates that will roll ou...

BSides SF 2019: Remote-Root Bug in Logitech Harmony Hub Patched and Explained

SAN FRANCISCO – Users of Logitech’s Harmony Hub have been wide open to an attack for years because of four unpatched vulnerabilities that left any IoT device connected at risk to remote takeover. The bugs were patched by Logitech in November, but for the first time the researchers that discovered...

xDedic Market Spilling Over With School Servers, PCs

Nearly two-thirds of servers and PCs peddled on the xDedic underground marketplace belong to schools and universities, and most are based in the United States. In a recent analysis of xDedic, Flashpoint found that besides the education sector, PC and servers tied to healthcare and legal firms mak...

Elasticsearch Elastichoney Honeypot Shows 8,000 RCE Attacks

Hackers have taken an interest in Elasticsearch, a popular enterprise search engine. A researcher based in Texas, whose own Elasticsearch server was hacked, today published results collated from a honeypot he built to get a sense of how widespread attacks are against the vulnerability that did in...

Revamped Pwn2Own to Offer $105K in Prizes, Cash From Google for Chrome 0-Days

The Pwn2Own contest at the CanSecWest conference has become one of the landmark events on the calendar each year, as researchers gather with nervous vendors in a tiny room to see who can own which browser on which platform and how quickly. But this year’s contest will have a much different look...

Microsoft develops secure Windows XP for military

Microsoft has developed an ultra-secure version of Windows XP, with many settings locked down by default. But the hardened OS isn’t for sale to the general public; it’s made specifically for the military. Microsoft built the secure version of XP a few years ago at the direction of the Air Force,...

Attackers Use Public Exploits to Throttle Atlassian Confluence Flaw

Threat actors are using public exploits to pummel a critical zero-day remote code execution RCE flaw that affects all versions of a popular collaboration tool used in cloud and hybrid server environments and allows for complete host takeover. Researchers from Volexity uncovered the flaw in...

Squirrel Bug Lets Attackers Execute Code in Games, Cloud Services

An out-of-bounds read vulnerability in the Squirrel programming language lets attackers break out of sandbox restrictions and execute arbitrary code within a Squirrel virtual machine VM, thus giving a malicious actor complete access to the underlying machine. Given where Squirrel lives – in games...

PDF Feature ‘Certified’ Widely Vulnerable to Attack

Certified portable document format PDF files are used to securely sign agreements between two parties while keeping the contents’ integrity protected, but a new report found the security protections on most certified PDF applications were inadequate and left organizations exposed to a number of...

Smart Doorbell Disaster: Many Brands Vulnerable to Attack

Smart doorbells, designed to allow homeowners to keep an eye on unwanted and wanted visitors, can often cause more security harm than good compared to their analog door bolt alternatives. Consumer-grade digital doorbells are riddled with potential cybersecurity vulnerabilities ranging from...

NSA Warns: Patched VMware Bug Under Active Attack

Active attacks against a flaw in VMware’s Workspace One Access continue, three days after the vendor patched the vulnerability and urged customers to fix the bug classified as a zero-day at the time. Now the U.S. National Security Agency NSA has escalated concerns and on Monday warned that foreig...

Cisco Patch-Palooza Tackles 29 High-Severity Bugs

Cisco Systems released a barrage of patches, Thursday, aimed at fixing bugs in the networking giant’s ubiquitous IOS operating system. The patches plug holes in a wide range of products and address denial-of-service, file overwrite and input validation attacks. The advisory was planned and part o...

U.S. Pipeline Disrupted by Ransomware Attack

A ransomware attack has hit a natural gas compression facility in the U.S., the feds have warned. The attack resulted in a two-day pipeline shutdown as the unnamed victim worked to bring systems back online from backups. The attackers were able penetrate the IT portion of the facility’s network,...

Exploit Fully Breaks SHA-1, Lowers the Attack Bar

A proof-of-concept attack has been pioneered that “fully and practically” breaks the Secure Hash Algorithm 1 SHA-1 code-signing encryption, used by legacy computers to sign the certificates that authenticate software downloads and prevent man-in-the-middle tampering. The exploit was developed by...

Ransomware Attack Topples Telemarketing Firm, Leaving Hundreds Jobless

A ransomware attack reportedly caused an Arkansas-based telemarketing company to temporarily suspend its operations, leaving hundreds of employees unsure that they still had jobs days before Christmas. The Heritage Company, a 61-year-old telemarketing firm that works with nonprofit organizations,...

ICS Attackers Set To Inflict More Damage With Evolving Tactics

Future attacks on industrial control system ICS networks may inflict even more damage in the long run, according to new research. Analysts expect them to evolve from attacks that have immediate, direct impact to those with multiple stages and attack vectors that are more stealthy. While it remain...

No 'Silver Bullet' Fix for Alexa, Google Smart Speaker Hacks

Researchers this week disclosed new ways that attackers can exploit Alexa and Google Home smart speakers to spy on users. The hacks, which rely on the abuse of “skills,” or apps for voice assistants, allow bad actors to eavesdrop on users and trick them into telling them their passwords over the...

Honda's Security 'Soft Spots' Exposed in Unsecured Database

An unsecured database belonging to Honda Motor Company was found leaking crucial information about its global systems, including which devices aren’t up-to-date or protected by security solutions. The exposed ElasticSearch database contained approximately 134 million documents, and amounted to...

FEMA Exposes PII for Millions of Hurricane, Wildfire Survivors

The Federal Emergency Management Agency exposed the personal identifiable information of 2.3 million survivors of hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria and the California wildfires in 2017, by oversharing survivor data with a contractor when it wasn’t necessary. Worse, the contractor’s networks has...

Flaw in Multiple Airline Systems Exposes Passenger Data

Researchers have discovered that multiple airline e-ticketing systems do not encrypt check-in links. The security faux pas could allow bad actors on the same network as the victim to view – and in some cases even change – their flight booking details or boarding passes. Security researchers at...

Microsoft Patches Actively Exploited Bug as Part of Patch Tuesday

UPDATE Microsoft has patched an elevation-of-privilege vulnerability it said is actively being exploited by hackers. The fix was part of Microsoft’s scheduled September Patch Tuesday release, which also included fixes for two other bugs found being used in the wild, including the zero-day found i...

Patch Tuesday Returns; Microsoft Quiet on Postponement

Patch Tuesday returned today as expected after last month’s postponement with a giant release of fixes that includes patches for vulnerabilities disclosed and exploited since the last set of updates in January. Microsoft, however, was relatively silent on the reasons why the February updates were...

Scareware and Phishing Scams Play on Windows 8 Launch

Windows 8 isn’t yet a week old, but the scammers and phishing crews already are taking their swings at it, setting up new campaigns based on the shiny new operating system. Security researchers have identified a new scareware campaign playing off of the Windows 8 launch, as well as a phishing ema...

The Security of the Android Operating System

In this video, Tim Armstrong, a malware researcher at Kaspersky Lab talks with Ryan Naraine about the strengths and weaknesses of the Android operating system. Armstrong looks at strengths and weaknesses of the open-source platform and warns about the risks associated with jailbreaking/rooting...

Multiple BusyBox Security Bugs Threaten Embedded Linux Devices

Researchers have discovered 14 critical vulnerabilities in a popular program used in embedded Linux applications, all of which allow for denial of service DoS and 10 that also enable remote code execution RCE, they said. One of the flaws also could allow devices to leak info, according to...

Nigerian Threat Actors Solicit Employees to Deploy Ransomware for Cut of Profits

Researchers have discovered a Nigerian threat actor trying to turn an organization’s employees into insider threats by soliciting them to deploy ransomware for a cut of the ransom profits. Researchers at Abnormal Security identified and blocked a number of emails sent earlier this month to some i...

Critical VMware Zero-Day Bug Allows Command Injection; Patch Pending

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is warning of a zero-day bug affecting six VMware products including its Workspace One, Identity Manager and vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager. The critical unpatched bug is a command injection vulnerability. In a separate VMware advisory,...

MFA Bypass Bugs Opened Microsoft 365 to Attack

Bugs in the multi-factor authentication system used by Microsoft’s cloud-based office productivity platform, Microsoft 365, opened the door for hackers to access cloud applications via a bypass of the security system, according to researchers at Proofpoint. The flaws exist in the implementation o...

Tuesday’s Magento 1 EOL Leaves Clock Ticking on 100K Online Stores

With Magento 1 reaching end-of-life EOL on Tuesday, Adobe is making a last-ditch effort to urge the 100,000 online stores still running the outdated version to migrate to Magento 2. Magento is a popular, Adobe-owned open-source e-commerce platform that powers many online shops. After June 30...

Medical Weed Dispensary Exposes Health Data for Thousands

A data breach at a medical marijuana dispensary company operating in Canada has sent the personal health privacy of about 34,000 patients up in smoke. An electronic medical record system used by Natural Health Services – a self-described “cannabinoid medical clinic that specializes in cannabis...

Unpatched Fujitsu Wireless Keyboard Bug Allows Keystroke Injection

UPDATE Fujitsu is stopping sales for its popular wireless keyboard after a researcher discovered it is vulnerable to keystroke injection attacks that could allow an adversary to take control of a victim’s system. Researchers with Germany-based SySS reported on Friday that the high-severity...