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A team of cybersecurity researchers demonstrated a novel yet another technique to hijack Intel SGX, a hardware-isolated trusted space on modern Intel CPUs that encrypts extremely sensitive data to shield it from attackers even when a system gets compromised. Dubbed Plundervolt and tracked as CVE-2019-11157, the attack relies on the fact that modern processors allow frequency and voltage to be adjusted when needed, which, according to researchers, can be modified in a controlled way to induce errors in the memory by flipping bits. Bit flip is a phenomenon widely known for the Rowhammer attack wherein attackers hijack vulnerable memory cells by changing their value from 1 to a 0, or vice versa—all by tweaking the electrical charge of neighboring memory cells. However, since the Software Guard Extensions (SGX) enclave memory is encrypted, the Plundervolt attack leverages the same idea of flipping bits by injecting faults in the CPU before they are written to the memory. Plundervo

OpenBSD, an open-source operating system built with security in mind, has been found vulnerable to four new high-severity security vulnerabilities, one of which is an old-school type authentication bypass vulnerability in BSD Auth framework. The other three vulnerabilities are privilege escalation issues that could allow local users or malicious software to gain privileges of an auth group, root, as well as of other users, respectively. The vulnerabilities were discovered and reported by Qualys Research Labs earlier this week, in response to which OpenBSD developers released security patches for OpenBSD 6.5 and OpenBSD 6.6 just yesterday—that's in less than 40 hours. Here's a brief explanation of all four security vulnerabilities in OpenBSD—a free and open-source BSD-based Unix-like operating system—along with their assigned CVE identifiers OpenBSD Authentication Bypass (CVE-2019-19521) The authentication bypass vulnerability resides in the way OpenBSD's auth

Identities now transcend human boundaries. Within each line of code and every API call lies a non-human identity. These entities act as programmatic access keys, enabling authentication and facilitating interactions among systems and services, which are essential for every API call, database query, or storage account access. As we depend on multi-factor authentication and passwords to safeguard human identities, a pressing question arises: How do we guarantee the security and integrity of these non-human counterparts? How do we authenticate, authorize, and regulate access for entities devoid of life but crucial for the functioning of critical systems? Let's break it down. The challenge Imagine a cloud-native application as a bustling metropolis of tiny neighborhoods known as microservices, all neatly packed into containers. These microservices function akin to diligent worker bees, each diligently performing its designated task, be it processing data, verifying credentials, or

Cybersecurity researchers today uncovered details of two new vulnerabilities in the GoAhead web server software, a tiny application widely embedded in hundreds of millions of Internet-connected smart devices. One of the two vulnerabilities, assigned as CVE-2019-5096, is a critical code execution flaw that can be exploited by attackers to execute malicious code on vulnerable devices and take control over them. The first vulnerability resides in the way multi-part/form-data requests are processed within the base GoAhead web server application, affecting GoAhead Web Server versions v5.0.1, v.4.1.1, and v3.6.5. According to the researchers at Cisco Talos, while processing a specially crafted HTTP request, an attacker exploiting the vulnerability can cause use-after-free condition on the server and corrupt heap structures, leading to code execution attacks. The second vulnerability, assigned as CVE-2019-5097, also resides in the same component of the GoAhead Web Server and can be

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new unpatched vulnerability in the Android operating system that dozens of malicious mobile apps are already exploiting in the wild to steal users' banking and other login credentials and spy on their activities. Dubbed Strandhogg , the vulnerability resides in the multitasking feature of Android that can be exploited by a malicious app installed on a device to masquerade as any other app on it, including any privileged system app. In other words, when a user taps the icon of a legitimate app, the malware exploiting the Strandhogg vulnerability can intercept and hijack this task to display a fake interface to the user instead of launching the legitimate application. By tricking users into thinking they are using a legitimate app, the vulnerability makes it possible for malicious apps to conveniently steal users' credentials using fake login screens, as shown in the video demonstration. "The vulnerability allows an attacke

Four popular open-source VNC remote desktop applications have been found vulnerable to a total of 37 security vulnerabilities, many of which went unnoticed for the last 20 years and most severe could allow remote attackers to compromise a targeted system. VNC (virtual network computing) is an open source graphical desktop sharing protocol based on RFB (Remote FrameBuffer) that allows users to remotely control another computer, similar to Microsoft's RDP service. The implementation of the VNC system includes a "server component," which runs on the computer sharing its desktop, and a "client component," which runs on the computer that will access the shared desktop. In other words, VNC allows you to use your mouse and keyboard to work on a remote computer as if you are sitting in front of it. There are numerous VNC applications, both free and commercial, compatible with widely used operating systems like Linux, macOS, Windows, and Android. Considering

The recent controversies surrounding the WhatsApp hacking haven't yet settled, and the world's most popular messaging platform could be in the choppy waters once again. The Hacker News has learned that last month WhatsApp quietly patched yet another critical vulnerability in its app that could have allowed attackers to remotely compromise targeted devices and potentially steal secured chat messages and files stored on them. The vulnerability — tracked as CVE-2019-11931 — is a stack-based buffer overflow issue that resided in the way previous WhatsApp versions parse the elementary stream metadata of an MP4 file, resulting in denial-of-service or remote code execution attacks. To remotely exploit the vulnerability, all an attacker needs is the phone number of targeted users and send them a maliciously crafted MP4 file over WhatsApp, which eventually can be programmed to install a malicious backdoor or spyware app on the compromised devices silently. The vulnerability

Hundreds of millions of devices, especially Android smartphones and tablets, using Qualcomm chipsets, are vulnerable to a new set of potentially serious vulnerabilities. According to a report cybersecurity firm CheckPoint shared with The Hacker News, the flaws could allow attackers to steal sensitive data stored in a secure area that is otherwise supposed to be the most protected part of a mobile device. The vulnerabilities reside in Qualcomm's Secure Execution Environment (QSEE), an implementation of Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) based on ARM TrustZone technology. Also known as Qualcomm's Secure World, QSEE is a hardware-isolated secure area on the main processor that aims to protect sensitive information and provides a separate secure environment (REE) for executing Trusted Applications. Along with other personal information, QSEE usually contains private encryption keys, passwords, credit, and debit card credentials. Since it is based on the principle of l

Zombieload is back. This time a new variant (v2) of the data-leaking side-channel vulnerability also affects the most recent Intel CPUs, including the latest Cascade Lake, which are otherwise resistant against attacks like Meltdown , Foreshadow and other MDS variants (RIDL and Fallout). Initially discovered in May this year, ZombieLoad is one of the three novel types of microarchitectural data sampling (MDS) speculative execution vulnerabilities that affect Intel processor generations released from 2011 onwards. The first variant of ZombieLoad is a Meltdown-type attack that targets the fill-buffer logic allowing attackers to steal sensitive data not only from other applications and the operating system but also from virtual machines running in the cloud with common hardware. ZombieLoad v2 Affects Latest Intel CPUs Now, the same group of researchers has disclosed details of a second variant of the vulnerability, dubbed ZombieLoad v2 and tracked as CVE-2019-11135 , that r

Security researchers at Bitdefender have discovered a high-severity security vulnerability in Amazon's Ring Video Doorbell Pro devices that could allow nearby attackers to steal your WiFi password and launch a variety of cyberattacks using MitM against other devices connected to the same network. In case you don't own one of these, Amazon's Ring Video Doorbell is a smart wireless home security doorbell camera that lets you see, hear and speak to anyone on your property from anywhere in the World. The smart doorbell needs to be connected to your WiFi network, allowing you to remotely access the device from a smartphone app to perform all tasks wirelessly. While setting up the device for the very first time and share your WiFi password with it, you need to enable the configuration mode from the doorbell. Entering into the configuration mode turns on a built-in, unprotected wireless access point, allowing the RING smartphone app installed on your device to automati

If you're running any PHP based website on NGINX server and have PHP-FPM feature enabled for better performance, then beware of a newly disclosed vulnerability that could allow unauthorized attackers to hack your website server remotely. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2019-11043 , affects websites with certain configurations of PHP-FPM that is reportedly not uncommon in the wild and could be exploited easily as a proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit for the flaw has already been released publicly. PHP-FPM is an alternative PHP FastCGI implementation that offers advanced and highly-efficient processing for scripts written in PHP programming language. The main vulnerability is an "env_path_info" underflow memory corruption issue in the PHP-FPM module, and chaining it together with other issues could allow attackers to remotely execute arbitrary code on vulnerable web servers. The vulnerability was spotted by Andrew Danau, a security researcher at Wallarm while hun

Following a series of security mishaps and data abuse through its social media platform, Facebook today expanding its bug bounty program in a very unique way to beef up the security of third-party apps and websites that integrate with its platform. Last year, Facebook launched " Data Abuse Bounty " program to reward anyone who reports valid events of 3rd-party apps collecting Facebook users' data and passing it off to malicious parties, violating Facebook's revamped data policies. Apparently, it turns out that most of the time, Facebook users' data that had been misused was exposed in the first place as the result of a vulnerability or security weakness in third-party apps or services. The Facebook ecosystem contains millions of third-party apps, and unfortunately, very few of them have a vulnerability disclosure program or offer bug bounty rewards to white-hat hackers for responsibly reporting bugs in their codebase. Because of this communication g

No, it's not a patch Tuesday. It's the third Tuesday of the month, and as The Hacker News shared an early heads-up late last week on Twitter, Adobe today finally released pre-announced out-of-band security updates to patch a total of 82 security vulnerabilities across its various products. The affected products that received security patches today include: Adobe Acrobat and Reader Adobe Experience Manager Adobe Experience Manager Forms Adobe Download Manager Out of 82 security vulnerabilities, 45 are rated critical, and all of them affect Adobe Acrobat and Reader and which, if exploited successfully, could lead to arbitrary code execution in the context of the current user. A majority of critical-rated vulnerabilities (i.e., 26) in Adobe Acrobat and Reader reside due to use-after-free, 6 due to out-of-bounds write, 4 are type confusion bugs, 4 due to untrusted pointer dereference, 3 are heap overflow bugs, one buffer overrun and one race condition issue. Ad

Until now, I'm sure you all might have heard of the SimJacker vulnerability disclosed exactly a month ago that affects a wide range of SIM cards and can remotely be exploited to hack into any mobile phone just by sending a specially crafted binary SMS. If you are unaware, the name "SimJacker" has been given to a class of vulnerabilities that resides due to a lack of authentication and proprietary security mechanisms implemented by dynamic SIM toolkits that come embedded in modern SIM cards. Out of many, two such widely used SIM toolkits — S@T Browser technology and Wireless Internet Browser (WIB) — have yet been found vulnerable to SimJacker attacks, details of which we have provided in our previous articles published last month. At that time, a few experts in the telecom industry confirmed The Hacker News that the SimJacker related weaknesses were internally known to many for years, and even researchers also revealed that an unnamed surveillance company has been

Microsoft today rolling out its October 2019 Patch Tuesday security updates to fix a total of 59 vulnerabilities in Windows operating systems and related software, 9 of which are rated as critical, 49 are important, and one is moderate in severity. What's good about this month's patch update is that after a very long time, none of the security vulnerabilities patched by the tech giant this month is being listed as publicly known or under active attack. Moreover, there is no roll-up patch for Adobe Flash Player bundled in Windows update for this month. Besides this, Microsoft has also put up a notice as a reminder for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 users, warning them that the extended support for these two operating systems is about to end in the next two months and that they will no longer receive updates as of January 14, 2020. Two of the critical vulnerabilities patched this month are remote code execution flaws in the VBScript engine, and both exist in the way VBS

After releasing a patch for a critical zero-day remote code execution vulnerability late last month, vBulletin has recently published a new security patch update that addresses 3 more high-severity vulnerabilities in its forum software. If left unpatched, the reported security vulnerabilities, which affect vBulletin 5.5.4 and prior versions, could eventually allow remote attackers to take complete control over targeted web servers and steal sensitive user information. Written in PHP, vBulletin is a widely used proprietary Internet forum software package that powers over 100,000 websites on the Internet, including Fortune 500 and Alexa Top 1 million companies websites and forums. Discovered by application security researcher Egidio Romano, the first vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2019-17132 , is a remote code execution flaw, while the other two are SQL injection issues, both assigned a single ID as CVE-2019-17271 . vBulletin RCE and SQLi Flaws The RCE flaw resides in the w

Almost every application contains security vulnerabilities, some of which you may find today, but others would remain invisible until someone else finds and exploits them—which is the harsh reality of cybersecurity and its current state. And when we say this, Signal Private Messenger —promoted as one of the most secure messengers in the world—isn't any exception. Google Project Zero researcher Natalie Silvanovich discovered a logical vulnerability in the Signal messaging app for Android that could allow malicious caller to force a call to be answered at the receiver's end without requiring his/her interaction. In other words, the flaw could be exploited to turn on the microphone of a targeted Signal user's device and listen to all surrounding conversations. However, the Signal vulnerability can only be exploited if the receiver fails to answer an audio call over Signal, eventually forcing the incoming call to be automatically answered on the receiver's device

Another day, another revelation of a critical unpatched zero-day vulnerability, this time in the world's most widely used mobile operating system, Android. What's more? The Android zero-day vulnerability has also been found to be exploited in the wild by the Israeli surveillance vendor NSO Group—infamous for selling zero-day exploits to governments—or one of its customers, to gain control of their targets' Android devices. Discovered by Project Zero researcher Maddie Stone, the details and a proof-of-concept exploit for the high-severity security vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2019-2215, has been made public today—just seven days after reporting it to the Android security team. The zero-day is a use-after-free vulnerability in the Android kernel's binder driver that can allow a local privileged attacker or an app to escalate their privileges to gain root access to a vulnerable device and potentially take full remote control of the device. Vulnerable Android D