Sudo Bug Gives Root Access to Mass Numbers of Linux Systems

A doozy of a bug that could allow any local user on most Linux or Unix systems to gain root access has been uncovered — and it had been sitting there for a decade, researchers said. The bug was found in Sudo, a utility built into most Unix and Linux operating systems that lets a user without...

Apple Manufacturer Foxconn Confirms Cyberattack

Foxconn Technology Group confirmed Tuesday that a November cyberattack knocked some of its U.S. operations offline. The incident is reportedly a ransomware attack carried out by a cybergang attempting to extort $34 million from the global manufacturing powerhouse. “We can confirm that an...

WordPress Sites Open to Code Injection Attacks via Welcart e-Commerce Bug

A security vulnerability in the Welcart e-Commerce plugin opens up websites to code injection. This can lead to payment skimmers being installed, crashing of the site or information retrieval via SQL injection, researchers said. Welcart e-Commerce is a free WordPress plugin that has more than...

Critical Slack Bug Allows Access to Private Channels, Conversations

A critical vulnerability in the popular Slack collaboration app would allow remote code-execution RCE. Attackers could gain full remote control over the Slack desktop app with a successful exploit — and thus access to private channels, conversations, passwords, tokens and keys, and various...

Ransomware Gang Arrested for Spreading Locky to Hospitals

A cybercriminal gang have been arrested for spreading the Locky ransomware among hospitals, among other crimes. In an operation spearheaded by Romania’s law enforcement department, four people have been taken into custody after their houses were raided – three in Romania and one in neighboring...

Zoom Scrutinized As Security Woes Mount

The New York attorney general, Letitia James, is demanding more information about how Zoom secures user data. The inquiry comes amidst mounting public scrutiny of the web conferencing platform’s data privacy and security policies. In a Monday letter, James questioned whether Zoom’s security...

Microsoft Patches RCE Bug Actively Under Attack

A critical bug in a Microsoft scripting engine, under active attack, has been patched as part of Microsoft’s Patch Tuesday security roundup. The vulnerability exists in Internet Explorer and allows an attacker to execute rogue code if a victim is coaxed into visiting a malicious web page, or, if...

Gamers Warned of High-Severity Intel, Nvidia Flaws

Chip giants Intel and Nvidia have stomped out high-severity flaws in two popular products, both commonly used by gamers. Impacted are the Nvidia Shield TV and Intel NUC short for Next Unit of Computing mini-PC kit. Nvidia Shield TV is a media streaming box powered by Nvidia’s Tegra X1...

Google Play Malicious Apps Racked Up 335M+ Installs In September

Despite Google’s stepped up efforts to ban malicious apps hosted on Google Play 172 harmful apps – installed 335 million times by users – have been discovered on the platform in September alone. ESET researcher Lukas Stefanko said on Tuesday that the majority of those 172 malicious apps were...

CISOs: Support vendor security ops for best cloud results

Data from McKinsey Insights suggests that many CISOs are uneasy about increasing dependence on SaaS applications and the security risks – real or perceived – the cloud represents. Their apprehension isn’t slowing down cloud adoption. As McKinsey put it, “Most companies … will eventually confront...

Microsoft Offers $30K Rewards For Chromium Edge Beta Flaws

Microsoft is calling on researchers to help sniff out any security glitches in the beta version of its new Chromium-based Edge browser before officially pushing it live. The tech company has been working to build a new version of Edge based on Google’s open-source Chromium code, as opposed to its...

Large-Scale Government Hacks Hit Russia, Bulgaria

A pair of notable hacks on government targets have come to light: One, an attack affecting nearly the entire country of Bulgaria; and two, a hack of Russia’s main security agency FSB that represents the largest data heist ever experienced there. In Bulgaria, cybercriminals were able to infiltrate...

The Future is Female: A Key to the Cybersecurity Workforce Challenge

By 2022, 2 million cybersecurity positions globally are projected to be open, even as the threat landscape accelerates and becomes more complex. To meet this growing workforce shortage, women are a crucial, largely untapped reservoir of talent that businesses should be courting. In this Threatpos...

Privacy Experts: Facebook's $5B Fine Unlikely to Do Much

The $5 billion fine that the Federal Trade Commission has slapped on Facebook for privacy violations may be the largest ever levied by the agency, but it’s being derided as “chump change” and ineffective by lawmakers and privacy analysts. The settlement, reported Friday evening, stems from...

Qualcomm Critical Flaw Exposes Private Keys For Android Devices

Researchers have uncovered a side-channel attack that enables a bad actor to extract sensitive data from Qualcomm’s secure keystore. The critical flaw impacts most modern Android devices that use Qualcomm chips. The issue stems from an issue in Qualcomm technology, dubbed the Qualcomm Secure...

Authentication Bypass Bug Hits Top Enterprise VPNs

UPDATE VPN apps built by four vendors — Cisco, F5 Networks, Palo Alto Networks and Pulse Secure — improperly store authentication tokens and session cookies without encryption on a user’s computer, according to an alert from the U.S. government’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency...

Podcast: RSA Conference 2019 Preview

The RSA 2019 conference is right around the corner, kicking off next week in San Francisco. As they prepare to cover the show, Threatpost editors Lindsey O’Donnell, Tom Spring and Tara Seals break down the biggest news, stories and trends – from artificial intelligence and government security to...

Waves of Attacks Target Adobe Reader Bug From 2010

Thanks to the wonderful tendency of users not to update their applications, old vulnerabilities never die, they just get overtaken by newer and shinier ones. The attackers know this well, and every once in a while they serve up a nice reminder to the rest of us. The most recent one of these is a...

Microsoft Pushes Emergency Patch For ASP.NET Flaw

Microsoft has released the emergency out-of-band patch for the ASP.NET padding oracle attack, less than two weeks after a pair of researchers discussed the flaw and a reliable attack against it at a security conference in Argentina. The patch for the ASP.NET bug is only available through...

Serious new flaw found in IIS 6.0

A new remotely-exploitable vulnerability has been found in the Microsoft IIS 6.0 Web server. The flaw is quite similar to one that was discovered eight years ago in earlier versions of IIS, and exploitation of the weakness could enable an attacker to upload content to the vulnerable server. The...

After attacks, Microsoft readies security patches

From CIO Robert McMillan Corporate IT staffers will get a double whammy next week, as both Microsoft and Oracle are set to release critical security updates cio.com on the same day, including a likely fix for an Excel bug that has been used by cybercriminals. This month, Oracle’s quarterly softwa...

Phony Instagram ‘Support Staff’ Emails Hit Insurance Company

A phishing campaign used the guise of Instagram technical support to steal login credentials from employees of a prominent U.S. life insurance company headquartered in New York, researchers have revealed. According to a report published by Armorblox on Wednesday, the attack combined brand...

The Uncertain Future of IT Automation

The majority of today’s cybersecurity breaches stem from unpatched vulnerabilities and outdated systems, which means that many cyberattacks are preventable. Unfortunately, it can be challenging for IT teams to keep up with the pace of new patches every month, especially when employee devices are...

Google Project Zero Cuts Bug Disclosure Timeline to a 30-Day Grace Period

Google Project Zero will now give organizations a 30-day grace period to patch zero-day flaws it discovers in a new disclosure policy revealed this week aimed at speeding up the time it takes for patches to be adopted. Known for discovering a number of high-profile zero days—in Google’s own...

Adobe Patches Slew of Critical Security Bugs in Bridge, Photoshop

Adobe has released security patches tackling four critical vulnerabilities in Adobe Bridge, along with other critical and important-rated updates for bugs in Adobe Digital Editions, Adobe Photoshop and RoboHelp. In all, Adobe fixed 10 security holes in its products during its scheduled April...

Compromised Website Images Camouflage ObliqueRAT Malware

The ObliqueRAT malware is now cloaking its payloads as seemingly-innocent image files that are hidden on compromised websites. The remote access trojan RAT, which has been operating since 2019, spreads via emails, which have malicious Microsoft Office documents attached. Previously, payloads were...

A Cyber 'Vigilante' is Sabotaging Emotet's Return

The banking trojan Emotet has returned after a five-month hiatus. But, in an amusing twist, one cyber vigilante is thwarting the malware’s comeback. Researchers say a mysterious vigilante is fighting the threat actors behind the malware’s comeback by replacing malicious Emotet payloads with...

Black Lives Matter Emails Deliver TrickBot Malware

Cyberattackers are seizing upon the 24-hour news cycle again in order to capitalize on the current zeitgeist – this time with a fake Black Lives Matter malspam campaign that distributes the TrickBot malware. According to Swiss security firm Abuse.ch, threat actors are posing as government...

Government VPN Servers Targeted in Zero-Day Attack

As the Chinese government turns to virtual private networks VPNs to provide access to official resources for those working remotely amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the DarkHotel APT has seized the opportunity to target those VPNs in a zero-day attack, researchers said. According to security analysts...

It’s Time for Your SOC to Level Up

Given an ever-increasing cyberattack surface, a global security workforce shortage, as well as an increased frequency and sophistication of attacks, security operations centers SOCs need to leverage better tools – namely artificial intelligence AI – in order to manage threats. An organization’s S...

Rooster Teeth Attack Showcases New Magecart Approach

The online store for the Rooster Teeth video-streaming service has been hit with a malicious web redirect attack by Magecart, which allowed the cybercriminals to harvest users’ payment-card details. The attack marks a slight departure from the group’s typical tactics. Rooster Teeth, which offers...

APT33 Mounts Focused, Highly Targeted Botnet Attacks Against U.S. Victims

The Iran-linked, espionage-focused advanced threat group known as APT33 has been spotted using more than a dozen obfuscated botnets to carry out narrowly targeted attacks against government and academic targets in the Middle East, the U.S. and Asia. Each botnet, linked to its own...

Lenovo High-Severity Bug Found in Pre-Installed Software

Another flaw has been found in Lenovo’s decommissioned Lenovo Solution Centre software, preinstalled on millions of older-model PCs made by the world’s leading computer maker. The vulnerability is a privilege escalation flaw that can be used to execute arbitrary code on a targeted system, giving ...

Apple Issues Silent Update Removing Zoom's Hidden Server

Apple has pushed a silent update to Mac users that removes a hidden web server from Zoom users’ machines. The Zoom web- and video-conferencing service has come under scrutiny for its handling of a zero-day bug CVE-2019–13450 found by researcher Jonathan Leitschuh, which would allow an attacker to...

LokiBot Trojan Spotted Hitching a Ride Inside .PNG Files

A spam campaign pushing the info-stealing LokiBot trojan leverages a novel technique to avoid detection. According to researchers, the spam messages include malicious .zipx attachment hidden inside a .PNG file that can slip past some email security gateways. According to Trustwave SpiderLabs, tha...

Ransomware Behind Norsk Hydro Attack Takes On Wiper-Like Capabilities

LockerGoga, the malware that took down Norsk Hydro last week, has taken the industrial world by storm, as researchers race to uncover more about the mysterious ransomware that crippled several of the aluminum maker’s plants. Questions still remain about how the malware first infects the system it...

RSAC 2019: New Operation Sharpshooter Data Reveals Higher Complexity, Scope

SAN FRANCISCO – An insidious reconnaissance campaign discovered in 2018, dubbed Operation Sharpshooter, is much more widespread than previously thought, researchers said. Operation Sharpshooter was first disclosed in December 2018, using a never-before-seen implant framework to infiltrate global...

TheMoon Rises Again, With a Botnet-as-a-Service Threat

TheMoon, an IoT botnet targeting home routers and modems, is entering a new phase, as it were: It has added a previously undocumented module that allows it to be sold as-a-service to other malicious actors. This has already had significant real-world consequences, according to CenturyLink Threat...

Patch Released for Critical Apache Struts Bug

The Apache Software Foundation has patched a critical remote code execution vulnerability affecting all versions of the popular application development framework Struts since 2008. All web applications using the framework’s REST plugin are vulnerable. Users are advised to upgrade their Apache...

Office Zero Day Delivering FINSPY Spyware to Victims in Russia

Since at least January, unidentified state-sponsored attackers have been targeting victims in Russia with FINSPY spyware delivered in exploits for an Office and WordPad zero-day vulnerability patched on Tuesday by Microsoft. Separately, the same zero-day has been leveraged in financially motivate...

Impact of New Linux Kernel DCCP Vulnerability Limited

Linux providers are busy developing and pushing out patches for a vulnerability in an obscure networking protocol that could allow a local attacker to crash the kernel and elevate privileges. Google software engineer Andrey Konovalov privately disclosed the vulnerability on Monday. The...

Facebook Releases osquery to Open Source

Facebook is in a giving mood today. The social networking giant announced today that it will release to open source a framework that detects and logs state changes in an operating system likely caused by an attack or performance meltdown. It also announced that it will hand out up to $300,000 nex...

iOS Developer Site at Core of Facebook, Apple Watering Hole Attack

UPDATE – The missing link connecting the attacks against Apple, Facebook and possibly Twitter is a popular iOS mobile developers’ forum called iPhoneDevSDK which was discovered hosting malware in an apparent watering hole attack that has likely snared victims at hundreds of organizations beyond t...

Ten Years After Gates's Memo, Effects Still Being Felt

Ten years. That’s a really long time. Think about what you were doing 10 years ago. Can you even remember? Maybe you were in college or high school, or cripes, even grade school. Or maybe you were working in security already, trying to figure out why your network kept getting overrun by viruses a...

Researchers Warn of New Windows 7 Vulnerability

Researchers are warning about a new remotely exploitable vulnerability in 64-bit Windows 7 that can be used by an attacker to run arbitrary code on a vulnerable machine. The bug was first reported a couple of days ago by an independent researcher and confirmed by Secunia. In a message on Twitter,...

Mobile Madness

Admit it. It would scarcely break your heart if the legions of slack-jawed smartphone Facebook and FourSquare gawkers were forced to confront their own digital mortality – however briefly – with a few scary exploits made just for them. In 2011, the untethered among us saw several mobile security...

Fake Reservation Links Prey on Weary Travelers

A longtime threat group identified as TA558 has ramped up efforts to target the travel and hospitality industries. After a lull in activity, believed tied to COVID-related travel restrictions, the threat group has ramped up campaigns to exploit an uptick in travel and related airline and hotel...

Sysrv-K Botnet Targets Windows, Linux

Unpatched vulnerabilities in the Spring Framework and WordPress plugins are being exploited by cybercriminals behind the Sysrv botnet to target Linux and Windows systems. The goal, according to researchers, is to infect systems with cryptomining malware. The botnet variant is being called Sysrv-K...

‘Long Live Log4Shell’: CVE-2021-44228 Not Dead Yet

Jen Easterly, the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA, stated in a public news interview that the now-infamous Log4j flaw is the “the most serious vulnerability that she has seen in her career.” It’s not a stretch to say the whole security industry would agree...

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...