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...

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 Battles Alureon Rootkit

For the second month in a row, Microsoft has tried to eradicate a mutating rootkit that has blocked some Windows users from installing security updates. Read the full article. Computerworld...

Cisco BPA, WSA Bugs Allow Remote Cyberattacks

A set of high-severity privilege-escalation vulnerabilities affecting Business Process Automation BPA application and Cisco’s Web Security Appliance WSA and could allow authenticated, remote attackers to access sensitive data or take over a targeted system. The first two bugs CVE-2021-1574 and...

FIFA 21 Blockbuster Release Gives Fraudsters an Open Field for Theft

The hotly anticipated release of blockbuster video game FIFA 21 on Oct. 6, along with the return of professional play, are giving soccer fans reason to celebrate. And, unsurprisingly, cybercriminals are already figuring out how to capitalize. A report from researcher Christopher Boyd at...

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...

University of Utah Pays $457K After Ransomware Attack

The University of Utah coughed up a $457,000 ransom payment after a ransomware attack hit the university’s servers, impacting undisclosed student and faculty related data. The Salt Lake City school, which has 24,485 undergraduate students and 8,333 graduate students enrolled, as well as 1,592...

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...

Facebook Faces Lawsuit Over Massive 2018 Data Breach

Facebook lost a key court ruling last week and now must face a lawsuit tied to a data breach of its platform disclosed in 2018, which impacted nearly 30 million of its users. The data breach, first disclosed by Facebook in September 2018, directly impacted the access tokens of 30 million accounts...

Amazon Employees Given 'Broad Access' to Personal Alexa Info

Employees at Amazon can access geolocation information for Alexa users, according to reports – thus uncovering their home addresses and even satellite pictures of their houses generated from a service such as Google Earth. Alexa is the built-in voice assistant shipped with devices like Amazon Ech...

Cisco Patches Critical Flaw In ASR 9000 Routers

Cisco has rushed out patches for a critical vulnerability in its ASR 9000 routers that could give remote, unauthenticated attackers access to the devices – as well as the power to launch denial-of-service DoS attacks against them. The flaw is specifically in Cisco Aggregation Services Routers ASR...

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...

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...

Misunderstanding APT Indicators of Compromise

Threatpost Op-Ed is a regular feature where experts contribute essays and commentary on what’s happening in security and privacy. Today’s contributors are Dave Dittrich and Katherine Carpenter. Reports of APT activities detail compromises spanning multiple organizations, sectors, industry...

Another Windows 7 Zero-Day Released

Microsoft’s security response team is investigating the release of a new zero-day flaw that exposes Windows 7 users to blue-screen crashes or code execution attacks. The flaw could be exploited by local attackers to cause a denial-of-service or potentially gain elevated privileges, according to a...

DragonForce Gang Unleash Hacks Against Govt. of India

According to a new advisory from Radware, a hacktivist group called DragonForce Malaysia, “with the assistance of several other threat groups, has begun indiscriminately scanning, defacing and launching denial-of-service attacks against numerous websites in India.” In addition to DDoS, their...

Log4J-Related RCE Flaw in H2 Database Earns Critical Warning

Researchers discovered a bug related to the Log4J logging library vulnerability, which in this case opens the door for an adversary to execute remote code on vulnerable systems. However, this flaw does not pose the same risk as the previously identified in Log4Shell, they said. JFrog security...

Third Log4J Bug Can Trigger DoS; Apache Issues Patch

No, you’re not seeing triple: On Friday, Apache released yet another patch – version 2.17 – for yet another flaw in the ubiquitous log4j logging library, this time for a DoS bug. Trouble comes in threes, and this is the third one for log4j. The latest bug isn’t a variant of the Log4Shell...

16-Year-Old HP Printer-Driver Bug Impacts Millions of Windows Machines

Researchers have released technical details on a high-severity privilege-escalation flaw in HP printer drivers also used by Samsung and Xerox, which impacts hundreds of millions of Windows machines. If exploited, cyberattackers could bypass security products; install programs; view, change, encry...

Amazon Kindle RCE Attack Starts with an Email

Three vulnerabilities in the Amazon Kindle e-reader would have allowed a remote attacker to execute code and run it as root – paving the way for siphoning money from unsuspecting users. Yogev Bar-On, researcher at Realmode Labs, found that it was possible to email malicious e-books to the devices...

Citrix SD-WAN Bugs Allow Remote Code Execution

Three security bugs in the Citrix software-defined SD-WAN platform would allow remote code-execution and network takeover, according to researchers. The flaws affect the Citrix SD-WAN Center in versions before 11.2.2, 11.1.2b and 10.2.8. They consist of an unauthenticated path traversal and shell...

Samsung Quietly Fixes Critical Galaxy Flaws Allowing Spying, Data Wiping

Researchers have disclosed a slew of critical-severity, patched flaws in flagship Samsung smartphones – including the Galaxy S7, S8 and S9 models. The vulnerabilities specifically stem from Samsung’s “Find My Mobile” service, a feature built into the smartphones allowing users to locate their...

Linux Bug Opens Most VPNs to Hijacking

A vulnerability in most Linux distros has been uncovered that allows a network-adjacent attacker to hijack VPN connections and inject rogue data into the secure tunnels that victims are using to communicate with remote servers. According to researchers at University of New Mexico and Breakpointin...

10 Steps for Ransomware Protection

Just the thought of ransomware is enough to keep CISOs and security teams up at night. Victims are caught in an awful choice between paying a ransom to a criminal who may or may not release their captured network and data, or potentially spending millions of dollars to remove the ransomware on...

Google Adds Password Checkup Feature to Chrome Browser

Google will soon alert Chrome browser users of weak or compromised passwords. The checks will be in real time as Chrome users visit a password protected website. Bad passwords will trigger a red dialogue box alerting users to take action to better protect their account. The move integrates a...

What You Need to Know About Next Gen EDR

Endpoint Detection & Response EDR is the main mode of cybersecurity utilized by many organizations. Already recognized in 2012 as its own category, EDR was pushed as the ideal response to the rapidly changing threatscape that until then had been dealt with though not so successfully primarily...

As End of Life Nears, More Than Half of Websites Still Use PHP V5

Almost 62 percent of all websites are still running PHP version 5 – even as version 5.6 of the server-side scripting language inches toward an ominous end-of-life. Hypertext Preprocessor PHP, a programming language designed for use in web-based applications with HTML content, supports a wide...

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...

End of Life Internet Explorer 8, 9, 10 Security Support

Anxiety was high around April 8, 2014 when Microsoft officially closed the door on security support for Windows XP. Many envisioned black hats worldwide stockpiling exploits waiting for the day when XP machines would be left permanently exposed. The anticipated malware apocalypse, however, never...

August 2013 Microsoft Patch Tuesday Security Updates

Microsoft took less than a month to incorporate an Oracle Outside In patch and fix a critically rated remote code execution bug in Exchange Servers. The Microsoft patch is among three critical bulletins—eight overall—released today as part of its August 2013 Patch Tuesday security updates. Oracle...

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...

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...

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...

MacOS Being Picked Apart by $49 XLoader Data Stealer

There’s a new version of the old FormBook form-stealer and keylogger that’s added Mac users to its hit list, and it’s selling like hotcakes on underground markets for as low as $49. It’s not only cheap; it’s easy. The data stealer is distributed in the form of malware-as-a-service MaaS and stands...

Trickbot Malware Rebounds with Virtual-Desktop Espionage Module

The Trickbot trojan is in resurgence mode, with its operators filling out infrastructure globally and releasing an updated version of its “vncDll” module, used for monitoring and intelligence gathering, researchers said. According to an analysis this week from Bitdefender, there has been “a...

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...

IBM AI-Powered Data Management Software Subject to Simple Exploit

The IBM’s next-gen data-management software suffers from a shared-memory vulnerability that researchers said could lead to other threats — as demonstrated by a new proof-of-concept exploit for the bug. The IBM Db2 is a family of hybrid data-management products containing artificial intelligence,...

Microsoft Warns of Critical Windows Zero-Day Flaws

Microsoft is warning of critical zero-day flaws in its Windows operating system that could enable remote code execution. The unpatched flaws are being exploited by attackers in “limited, targeted” attacks, the company said. According to Microsoft, two remote code execution vulnerabilities exist i...

Data Breach Occurs at Agency in Charge of Secure White House Communications

Hackers have compromised the Department of Defense DoD agency in charge of securing and managing communications for the White House, leaking personally identifiable information PII of employees and leading to concerns over the safety of the communications of top-level U.S. officials in the run-up...

Data Breach Affects 63 Landry's Restaurants

Dining giant Landry’s disclosed a data breach, Thursday, warning that malware had infected its order-entry systems to steal customers’ payment card information. Landry’s, which owns over 600 popular American restaurants across 35 states, such as Del Frisco’s Grill, McCormick & Schmick’s, Rainfore...

News Wrap: Office 365 Voicemail Phish and Bed Bath and Beyond Breach

Threatpost editors Tara Seals and Lindsey O’Donnell break down the top security news of this week, from data breaches to advanced persistent threat APT activity. Top stories include: A Microsoft alert that APT group Fancy Bear has targeted anti-doping authorities and sporting organizations around...

DEF CON 2019: Picture Perfect Hack of a Canon EOS 80D DSLR

LAS VEGAS – Multiple vulnerabilities in Canon’s DSLR camera firmware could allow an attacker to plant malware on devices and ransom images from users. The bugs, outlined in a session here at DEF CON, open the door to a range of hacks via a Wi-Fi network or a PC’s USB connection to a camera. Eyal...

Second Florida City Pays Hackers $500k Post-Ransomware Attack

UPDATE A city in Florida has paid hackers almost $500,000 after suffering a ransomware attack that locked down its email systems and servers – only the latest municipality to be hit by ransomware and pay the ransom. The Florida municipality, Lake City, has a population of 12,046 and is located in...

Multiple Sierra Wireless AirLink Routers Open to Remote Code Execution

Sierra Wireless is warning that additional AirLink router models, which are targeted toward IoT applications, are vulnerable to previously-disclosed critical flaws. The vulnerabilities are part of the 11 critical bugs disclosed on Sierra Wireless’ AirLink ES450 LTE router last week – only now,...

Microsoft January Patch Tuesday Update Fixes 16 Critical Bugs

Thanks to Meltdown and Spectre, January has already been an extremely busy month of patching for Microsoft. Today Microsoft tackled dozens more bugs, part of its regular Patch Tuesday release covering Microsoft Edge, Windows, Office, ASP.NET and the macOS version of Office. Sixteen of Microsoft’s...

Microsoft Extends SHA-2, TLS Support for Windows

One by one, tech companies have been tossing aside the SHA-1 cryptographic algorithm like the unreliable collision-prone mess that it is. Microsoft was among the first to steer its customers away from SHA-1 and established an internal edict that its developers would no longer use it for...

Richard Boscovich on the Zeus Botnet Takedown

Dennis Fisher talks with Richard Boscovich of the Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit about the operation to take down the Zeus botnet, how the company works with partners and law enforcement on these operations and the importance of getting the word out to consumers about the danger of botnets. Podcas...

Microsoft Adds New Exploit Mitigations to IE 10

Windows 8 is still off on the horizon somewhere, but the new version of Internet Explorer that’s coming with it–IE 10–already is in consumer preview and it includes some major changes to the exploit mitigations. In addition to the existing implementations of ASLR, DEP and others technologies in...

Microsoft Fixes Critical IE, Windows Bugs with February Patch Tuesday

Microsoft released nine security updates Tuesday, four critical; five important, fixing 21 different holes in various applications with its February patch release. The four critical fixes deal with vulnerabilities in the company’s Windows, Internet Explorer, .NET Framework and Silverlight program...