Threatpost Data: Password Managers Are Worth the Risk, Readers Say

Despite a high-profile memory-related vulnerability in password managers capturing headlines last week, a recent Threatpost poll found that 84 percent of respondents use password managers – while only 10 percent said they don’t due to security risks. There have been vulnerabilities found before i...

Facebook Bans More Than 800 Accounts in Disinformation Purge

Facebook on Thursday announced it has removed hundreds of pages and accounts as the company cracks down on spam. The move comes at a time when Facebook is under intense scrutiny about how it handles misinformation, particularly as the U.S. midterm elections draw near. The company said it has...

Adobe Flash Player Zero-Day Spotted in the Wild

The South Korean Computer Emergency Response Team issued a warning Wednesday of a new Adobe Flash Player zero-day spotted in the wild. The security bulletin warns that the attacks are focused on South Koreans and involve malicious Microsoft Word documents. According to the South Korean Computer...

Five Critical Android Bugs Get Patched in October Update

Five critical vulnerabilities were reported by Google Monday as part of its October Android Security Bulletin. In all, 14 patches were issued for corresponding vulnerabilities, ranging from critical to high. The relative low bug count for the month of October is due to the fact this month Google...

Microsoft Releases Outlook Patches, Fixes Broken Update

During the heat of Black Hat last week, Microsoft pushed out patches for Outlook that address three newly reported vulnerabilities. Last week’s update also included fixes for six of eight vulnerabilities left unpatched after issues were reported with the June Patch Tuesday update. The most seriou...

Windows SMB Zero Day to Be Disclosed During DEF CON

LAS VEGAS—A 20-year-old Windows SMB vulnerability is expected to be disclosed Saturday during a talk at DEF CON. Microsoft has said it will not patch the vulnerability, which allows an attacker to remotely crash a Windows server with relative ease using only 20 lines of Python code and a Raspberr...

Apple Patches 'BroadPwn' Bug in iOS 10.3.3

Apple released iOS 10.3.3 Wednesday, which serves as a cumulative update that includes patches for multiple vulnerabilities including the high-profile BroadPwn bug that allowed an attacker to seize control of a targeted iOS device. BroadPwn was revealed earlier this month as a flaw in Broadcom...

Average Bug Bounty Payments Growing

HackerOne said Monday its average dollar payouts to participants are up, and cross site scripting vulnerabilities cause the biggest headaches for companies. The bug bounty platform provider culled data from the past four years, analyzing 50,000 reported bugs and more than $17 million in payouts t...

Cisco Warns of High Severity Bug in NetFlow Appliance

Warning the device is susceptible to denial of service attacks, Cisco Systems on Wednesday released a patch for its NetFlow Generation Appliance. The flaw traces back to the hardware’s Stream Control Transmission Protocol SCTP used by the appliance, according to a Cisco Security Advisory posted...

Microsoft Issues Critical, Out-of-Band Patch for All Versions of Windows

Microsoft released an out-of-band patch Monday that addresses a critical remotely exploitable flaw in all versions of Windows. The vulnerability stems from how Windows’ Adobe Type Manager Library handles OpenType fonts. If a user was tricked into either opening a rigged document or visiting an...

Android Factory Reset Improper Sanitization Exposes Data

The churn of Android devices, whether older smartphones being traded in or sold online, makes device sanitization imperative. The native feature in the OS, however, may not be doing as thorough a job as advertised. A paper, “Security Analysis of Android Factory Resets” pdf, published by Ross...

Oracle Patches VENOM Vulnerability

Oracle, whose virtualization software VirtualBox is among those affected by the VENOM vulnerability, on Saturday joined the litany of VM providers that have patched the bug. Oracle was one of the first vendors notified by Crowdstrike, whose researcher Jason Geffner found the bug and disclosed it...

Lessons Learned in Building a Vulnerability Coordination Program

CANCUN – Bounty programs are mislabeled creatures, too often pigeonholed as a payoff for finding individual vulnerabilities in software. Wrong. “The name bug bounty is actually a false categorization of what is truly just an incentive program,” said Katie Moussouris, chief policy officer at...

Windows Kernel-Mode Driver Flaw Exploitable With One Bit

The vulnerabilities addressed in this month’s Patch Tuesday security bulletins from Microsoft have been a mashup of critical bugs affecting most supported versions of Windows and Internet Explorer that could pave the way for attackers to gain complete control of affected systems. Sounds like most...

Ghost glibc Vulnerability Patching and Exploits

There are some silver linings in the wake of yesterday’s disclosure of the Ghost vulnerability in the Gnu C library, glibc, which affects all Linux systems and seemed to harken yet another Internet-wide vulnerability. First, the 15-year-old bug isn’t the showstopper that the Shellshock...

Microsoft Releases Workaround For Kernel Flaw Used By Duqu

Microsoft has released a workaround for the Windows kernel zero-day vulnerability exploited by the Duqu malware, and said that it is working on a permanent patch, but didn’t specify a timeline for its release. The vulnerability is a serious one that can lead to remote code execution on vulnerable...

Blowback: Microsoft, OnStar Pump the Brakes on Location Tracking

Redmond, Washington software giant, Microsoft, and Detroit based GM subsidiary, OnStar backtracked on policies widely seen as egregious privacy violations following lawsuits and public outcry. Here’s the news: Windows Phone Update Requires User Consent For Tracking Microsoft released their “Mango...

Google Fixes 15 Bugs in Chrome, Gives Users Ability to Delete Flash Cookies

Google has fixed more than a dozen security bugs in its Chrome browser, including five high-severity vulnerabilities and one that qualified for the company’s highest bug bounty, a $3133.7 reward. The new version of Chrome has fixes for 15 separate security vulnerabilities, the most critical of...

MS Discovers Over 1,800 Office 2010 Bugs

Microsoft uncovered more than 1,800 bugs in Office 2010 by tapping into the unused computing horsepower of idling PCs. Office developers found the bugs by running millions of “fuzzing” tests, said Tom Gallagher, senior security test lead with Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing group. Read the full...

Microsoft Issues Fix-It Workaround for IE Zero-Day

Microsoft has released a one-click “fix-it” workaround to help Internet Explorer users block malware attacks against an unpatched browser vulnerability. The Fix-It workaround, available here, effectively disables peer factory in the iepeers.dll binary in affected versions of Internet Explorer. Th...

Microsoft Acknowledges IE7 Flaw

Microsoft has acknowledged a new unpatched vulnerability in Internet Explorer 6 and 7, and said that the company is investigating methods for fixing the flaw. The company said that although there is public exploit code available for the vulnerability, it has not seen any evidence of ongoing attac...

New Zero-Day Flaw Discovered in IE7

There is a newly discovered vulnerability in both Internet Explorer 6 and Internet Explorer 7 that could enable an attacker to take complete control of a vulnerable machine. The vulnerability is the result of a dangling pointer in IE and there is a working exploit for the flaw circulating online...

Malicious Npm Packages Tapped Again to Target Discord Users

Threat actors once again are using the node package manager npm repository to hide malware that can steal Discord tokens to monitor user sessions and steal data on the popular chat and collaboration platform, researchers have found. A campaign discovered this week by Kaspersky researchers is hidi...

Russia Lays Groundwork for Cyberattacks on U.S. Infrastructure

The Russian government is exploring “options for potential cyberattacks” on critical infrastructure in the U.S., the White House warned on Monday, in retaliation for sanctions and other punishments as the war in Ukraine grinds on. Officials said that its latest intelligence shows cyber-related...

Three Plugins with Same Bug Put 84K WordPress Sites at Risk

Researchers have discovered three WordPress plug-ins with the same vulnerability that allows an attacker to update arbitrary site options on a vulnerable site and completely take it over. Exploiting the flaw does require some action from the site administrator, however. On Nov. 5, 2021, the...

URL Parsing-Library Bugs Allow DoS, RCE, Spoofing & More

Eight different security vulnerabilities arising from inconsistencies among 16 different URL parsing libraries could allow denial-of-service DoS conditions, information leaks and remote code execution RCE in various web applications, researchers are warning. The bugs were found in third-party web...

Fresh APT Harvester Reaps Telco, Government Data

A previously unseen advanced persistent threat APT group dubbed Harvester by researchers is attacking telcos, IT companies and government-sector targets in a campaign that’s been ongoing since June. According to a Symantec analysis, the group sports a veritable cornucopia of advanced and custom...

ZLoader’s Back, Abusing Google AdWords, Disabling Windows Defender

A targeted campaign delivering the ZLoader banking trojan is spreading via Google AdWords, and is using a mechanism to disable all Windows Defender modules on victim machines, researchers have found. That’s according to SentinelLabs, which said that to lower the rates of detection, the infection...

Web Censorship Systems Can Facilitate Massive DDoS Attacks

Researchers are warning internet censorship systems are ripe for abuse by a new type of distributed denial of service DDoS attack. The potential for abuse is concerning, researchers say, because attacks would take advantage of a type of reflection and amplification, which would be “extremely...

Phishing Costs Nearly Quadrupled Over 6 Years

Research shows that the cost of phishing attacks has nearly quadrupled over the past six years: Large U.S. companies are now losing, on average, $14.8 million annually, or $1,500 per employee. That’s up sharply from 2015’s figure of $3.8 million, according to a new study from Ponemon Institute th...

Connected Farms Easy Pickings for Global Food Supply-Chain Hack

A group of hackers made an unnerving DEF CON 29 presentation showing how the sprawling growth of digital and automated farming has left the world’s food supply chain vulnerable to cyberattack. A video for DEF CON 29 hacker conference this week put out by the group Sick Codes explained that modern...

Hackers Crack Pirated Games with Cryptojacking Malware

A new Monero cryptojacking malware distributed via “cracked” versions of popular online games is wiping out antivirus programs AVs and surreptitiously mining cryptocurrency in more than a dozen countries, researchers have found. Dubbed “Crackonosh,” the malware — which has been active since June...

BEC Losses Top $1.8B as Tactics Evolve

Business email compromise BEC attacks ramped up significantly in 2020, with more than $1.8 billion stolen from organizations with these types of attacks last year alone — and things are getting worse. BEC attacks are carried out by cybercriminals either impersonating someone inside an organizatio...

DoJ Charges Rhode Island Woman in Phishing Scheme Against Politicians

The Department of Justice DoJ has charged a woman in Rhode Island in a phishing campaign against candidates for political office and related associates that impersonated various individuals–including campaign workers and the Microsoft security team—in an attempt to trick victims into providing...

Amazon Sidewalk Poised to Sweep You Into Its Mesh

Tweet On June 8, Amazon, the Web giant with tentacles reaching into every nook and cranny of our lives, is going to stretch those tentacles out further by turning all its gadgets into little cell towers so they can help each other out with little slices of bandwidth. It’s created a new Wi-Fi...

NitroRansomware Asks for $9.99 Discord Gift Codes, Steals Access Tokens

The NitroRansomware malware strain is shaking up the ransomware norm by demanding Discord Nitro gift codes from victims instead of actual money. Discord is a VoIP, instant messaging and digital-distribution platform designed for creating communities. Users communicate with voice calls, video call...

Call of Duty Cheats Expose Gamers to Malware

Activision, the company behind Call of Duty: Warzone, has issued a warning that a threat actor is taking out ads for cheat tools, which instead turn out to be remote-access trojan RAT malware . The scam was first floated in March when a cyberattacker posted in hacking forums that they had a free,...

Fraud Ring Launders Money Via Fake Charity Donations

A money-laundering fraud ring is targeting donation sites, taking advantage of the outpouring of charity sparked by the global pandemic. Dubbed Cart Crasher by the Sift security firm, the fraud ring leverages guest checkout options on donation sites to steal money and launder stolen payment cards...

Industrial Gear at Risk from Fuji Code-Execution Bugs

Industrial control software ICS from Fuji Electric is vulnerable to several high-severity arbitrary code-execution security bugs, according to a federal warning. Authorities are warning the flaws could allow physical attacks on factory and critical-infrastructure equipment. Fuji Electric’s Tellus...

Facebook: Malicious Chrome Extension Developers Scraped Profile Data

Facebook has filed legal action against two Chrome extension developers that the company said was scraping user profile data – including names and profile IDs – as well as other browser-related information. The two unnamed developers under the business name Oink and Stuff, developed Chrome...

Fileless Malware Tops Critical Endpoint Threats for 1H 2020

In the first half of 2020, the most common critical-severity cybersecurity threat to endpoints was fileless malware, according to a recent analysis of telemetry data from Cisco. Fileless threats consist of malicious code that runs in memory after initial infection, instead of files being stored o...

NSA Urgently Warns on Industrial Cyberattacks, Triconex Critical Bug

The U.S. National Security Agency NSA and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA have issued an alert warning that adversaries could be targeting critical infrastructure across the U.S. Separately, ICS-CERT issued an advisory on a critical security bug in the Schneider Electric...

WolfRAT Android Malware Targets WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger

UPDATE A new Android malware family has been discovered, which targets popular messaging apps like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger to gather intelligence on Android victims. The malware, dubbed WolfRAT, is under active development, and was recently identified in campaigns targeting Thai users...

Podcast: Shifting Cloud Security Left With Infrastructure-as-Code

Companies are increasingly dealing with a slew of security and compliance issues across cloud services and containers – from AWS to Azure to Google Cloud. Infrastructure-as-Code IaC security capabilities can help companies shift their cloud security “left” to improve developer productivity, avoid...

Lazarus Group Hides macOS Spyware in 2FA Application

The North Korea-linked cyberthreat group known as Lazarus Group has added a new variant of the Dacls remote-access trojan RAT to its arsenal of spy gear, designed specifically for the Mac operating system. Dacls was first discovered last December targeting Windows and Linux platforms. The new...

High-Severity Flaws Plague Intel Graphics Drivers

Intel has issued security patches for six high-severity vulnerabilities in its Windows graphics drivers which, if exploited, could enable escalation of privilege, denial of service DoS and information disclosure. The graphics driver is software that controls how graphic components work with the...

Katie Moussouris: The Bug Bounty Conflict of Interest

Since the launch of the Hack the Pentagon program in 2016, bug bounty programs continue to increase in popularity – however, as more programs are created, some companies are forgetting the real reason behind bug bounties. Instead of aiming to make their systems more secure, companies are viewing...

Sodinokibi Ransomware Group Sponsors Hacking Contest

White hats aren’t alone in holding hacking contests. Russian-language cybercriminals are known for running similar competitions on underground forums. However, an analysis of Dark Web activity has uncovered a trend towards offering increasingly high-stakes prizes during such battles. At the same...

Zoom Fixed Flaw Opening Meetings to Hackers

NEW ORLEANS – Enterprise video conferencing firm Zoom has issued a bevy of security fixes after researchers said the company’s platform used weak authentication that made it possible for adversaries to join active meetings. The issue stems from Zoom’s conference meetings not requiring a “meeting...

Threatpost Poll: Are Published PoC Exploits a Good or Bad Idea?

The practice of disclosing proof-of-concept PoC exploits has long caused a debate in the security community. As the name suggests, these outline steps used to exploit a vulnerability in a system to show how it can be done — and are used to test networks and pinpoint vulnerable aspects of a system...