#1 Trusted Cybersecurity News Platform Followed by 4.50+ million
The Hacker News Logo
Get the Free Newsletter
SaaS Security

VLC media player | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Australian Healthcare Sector Targeted in Latest Gootkit Malware Attacks

Australian Healthcare Sector Targeted in Latest Gootkit Malware Attacks

Jan 11, 2023 Healthcare / Cyber Threat
A recent wave of Gootkit malware loader attacks has targeted the Australian healthcare sector by leveraging legitimate tools like VLC Media Player. Gootkit , also called Gootloader, is  known  to  employ  search engine optimization (SEO) poisoning tactics (aka spamdexing) for initial access. It typically works by compromising and abusing legitimate infrastructure and seeding those sites with common keywords. Like other malware of its kind, Gootkit is capable of stealing data from the browser, performing adversary-in-the-browser (AitB) attacks, keylogging, taking screenshots, and other malicious actions. Trend Micro's  new findings  reveal that the keywords "hospital," "health," "medical," and "enterprise agreement" have been paired with various city names in Australia, marking the malware's expansion beyond accounting and law firms. The starting point of the cyber assault is to direct users searching for the same keywords to an infe
Beware! Playing Untrusted Videos On VLC Player Could Hack Your Computer

Beware! Playing Untrusted Videos On VLC Player Could Hack Your Computer

Jun 21, 2019
If you use VLC media player on your computer and haven't updated it recently, don't you even dare to play any untrusted, randomly downloaded video file on it. Doing so could allow hackers to remotely take full control over your computer system. That's because VLC media player software versions prior to 3.0.7 contain two high-risk security vulnerabilities , besides many other medium- and low-severity security flaws, that could potentially lead to arbitrary code execution attacks. With more than 3 billion downloads, VLC is a hugely popular open-source media player software that is currently being used by hundreds of millions of users worldwide on all major platforms, including Windows, macOS, Linux, as well as Android and iOS mobile platforms. Discovered by Symeon Paraschoudis from Pen Test Partners and identified as CVE-2019-12874 , the first high-severity vulnerability is a double-free issue which resides in "zlib_decompress_extra" function of VideoLAN
Making Sense of Operational Technology Attacks: The Past, Present, and Future

Making Sense of Operational Technology Attacks: The Past, Present, and Future

Mar 21, 2024Operational Technology / SCADA Security
When you read reports about cyber-attacks affecting operational technology (OT), it's easy to get caught up in the hype and assume every single one is sophisticated. But are OT environments all over the world really besieged by a constant barrage of complex cyber-attacks? Answering that would require breaking down the different types of OT cyber-attacks and then looking back on all the historical attacks to see how those types compare.  The Types of OT Cyber-Attacks Over the past few decades, there has been a growing awareness of the need for improved cybersecurity practices in IT's lesser-known counterpart, OT. In fact, the lines of what constitutes a cyber-attack on OT have never been well defined, and if anything, they have further blurred over time. Therefore, we'd like to begin this post with a discussion around the ways in which cyber-attacks can either target or just simply impact OT, and why it might be important for us to make the distinction going forward. Figure 1 The Pu
Millions of PCs Found Running Outdated Versions of Popular Software

Millions of PCs Found Running Outdated Versions of Popular Software

Jan 24, 2019
It is 2019, and millions of computers still either have at least one outdated application installed or run outdated operating systems, making themselves vulnerable to online threats and known security vulnerabilities/exploits. Security vendor Avast has released its PC Trends Report 2019 revealing that millions of users are making themselves vulnerable to cyber attacks by keeping outdated versions of popular applications on their computers. Probably the most overlooked vectors for any cyber attack is out-of-date programs, which most of the times, is the result of the users' laziness and company's administrators ignoring the security updates in a business environment as they can't afford the downtime. According to the report [ PDF ],  Adobe Shockwave tops the list of software that most user left outdated on their PCs, followed by VLC Media Player, Skype, Java Runtime Environment , 7-Zip File Manager, and Foxit Reader. The outdated software applications often provide an ope
cyber security

Automated remediation solutions are crucial for security

websiteWing SecurityShadow IT / SaaS Security
Especially when it comes to securing employees' SaaS usage, don't settle for a longer to-do list. Auto-remediation is key to achieving SaaS security.
Critical Code Execution Flaw Found in LIVE555 Streaming Library

Critical Code Execution Flaw Found in LIVE555 Streaming Library

Oct 19, 2018
Security researchers have discovered a serious code execution vulnerability in the LIVE555 streaming media library—which is being used by popular media players, along with a number of embedded devices capable of streaming media. LIVE555 streaming media, developed and maintained by Live Networks , is a set of C++ libraries companies and application developers use to stream multimedia over open standard protocols like RTP/RTCP, RTSP or SIP. The LIVE555 streaming media libraries support streaming, receiving, and processing of various video formats such as MPEG, H.265, H.264, H.263+, VP8, DV, and JPEG video, and several audio codecs such as MPEG, AAC, AMR, AC-3, and Vorbis. UPDATE: LIVE555 streaming media library supports both server and client, and is internally being used by many well-known media software such as VLC and MPlayer, security researchers at Talos mentioned in the advisory. Though researchers didn't specify if the vulnerable component (a server-side library)
Beware! Subtitle Files Can Hack Your Computer While You're Enjoying Movies

Beware! Subtitle Files Can Hack Your Computer While You're Enjoying Movies

May 23, 2017
Do you watch movies with subtitles? Just last night, I wanted to watch a French movie, so I searched for English subtitles and downloaded it to my computer. Though that film was excellent, this morning a new research from Checkpoint scared me. I was unaware that a little subtitle file could hand over full control of my computer to hackers, while I was enjoying the movie. Yes, you heard that right. A team of researchers at Check Point has discovered vulnerabilities in four of the most popular media player applications, which can be exploited by hackers to hijack " any type of device via vulnerabilities; whether it is a PC, a smart TV, or a mobile device " with malicious codes inserted into the subtitle files. " We have now discovered malicious subtitles could be created and delivered to millions of devices automatically, bypassing security software and giving the attacker full control of the infected device and the data it holds, " he added. These
Buffer Overflow vulnerability in VLC media player

Buffer Overflow vulnerability in VLC media player

Feb 01, 2013
VideoLAN recently published a security advisory warning of a buffer overflow vulnerability in versions 2.0.5 and earlier of VLC Media Player, which might be exploited to execute arbitrary code. This vulnerability was reported by Debasish Mandal. The vulnerability is caused due to an error in the "DemuxPacket()" function (modules/demux/asf/asf.c) when processing ASF files and can be exploited to cause a buffer overflow via a specially crafted ASF file. To exploit the vulnerability, a user must explicitly open a specially crafted ASF movie. Successful exploitation may allow execution of arbitrary code, but requires tricking a user into opening a malicious file. VideoLAN advises users to refrain from opening files from untrusted locations and to disable the VLC browser plug-ins until the issue is patched. A patch will be included in VLC 2.0.6, the next version of the media player, which is only available for testing purposes at the moment.
Cybersecurity Resources