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Cisco has fixed a critical vulnerability in Secure Access Control Server for Windows that could allow remote attackers to execute arbitrary commands and take control of the underlying operating system. Cisco Secure ACS is an application that allows companies to centrally manage access to network resources for various types of devices and users.  The reported flaw affects Cisco Secure ACS for Windows versions 4.0 through 4.2.1.15. Successful exploitation requires that Cisco Secure Access Control Server is configured as a RADIUS server EAP-FAST authentication. The Cisco Security advisory said: " The vulnerability is due to improper parsing of user identities used for EAP-FAST authentication. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending crafted EAP-FAST packets to an affected device. An exploit could allow the attacker to execute arbitrary commands on the Cisco Secure ACS server and take full control of the affected server ," The newly patched vulnerabili

Yeah, it's Patch Tuesday once again. Almost 10 years ago in October, 2003 - Microsoft  invented the process of regularly scheduled security updates on every second Tuesday of the Month, as  Patch Tuesday. Today, the Microsoft Security team will i ssue eight security updates in total, out of that -- three of which are designated as " critical ," and rest five as " Important " updates, that patches vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Server Software, and Internet Explorer. The eight bulletins that Microsoft is releasing fixes a total of 23 different vulnerabilities in Microsoft products. Microsoft will be rolling out a total of three Critical patches dealing with Remote Code Execution. Windows 8 is expected to get four of the updates, one of them is critical and dealing with Remote Code Execution with Internet Explorer 10, while the other three updates are Important and deal with Elevation of Privilege and Denial of Service . Windows RT i

Imagine a world where the software that powers your favorite apps, secures your online transactions, and keeps your digital life could be outsmarted and taken over by a cleverly disguised piece of code. This isn't a plot from the latest cyber-thriller; it's actually been a reality for years now. How this will change – in a positive or negative direction – as artificial intelligence (AI) takes on a larger role in software development is one of the big uncertainties related to this brave new world. In an era where AI promises to revolutionize how we live and work, the conversation about its security implications cannot be sidelined. As we increasingly rely on AI for tasks ranging from mundane to mission-critical, the question is no longer just, "Can AI  boost cybersecurity ?" (sure!), but also "Can AI  be hacked? " (yes!), "Can one use AI  to hack? " (of course!), and "Will AI  produce secure software ?" (well…). This thought leadership article is about the latter. Cydrill  (a

Microsoft has announced   Patch Tuesday for this July Month, with seven bulletins. Out of that, one is important kernel privilege escalation flaw and six critical Remote Code Execution vulnerabilities . Patch will address vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows, .Net Framework, Silverlight and will apply to all versions of Internet Explorer from IE6 on Windows XP to IE10 on Windows 8 . Often targeted by attackers to perform drive-by malware download attacks, remote code execution flaws allow an attacker to crash an application and launch malware payloads often without any sort of notification or interaction form the user. The Windows 8 maker is also patching a kernel vulnerability disclosed at the beginning of June by Google researcher Tavis Ormandy . The issue is to do with Windows kernel's EPATHOBJ::pprFlattenRec function (CVE-2013-3660) and after Ormandy released the exploit code, Metasploit module was developed to exploit the bug. The company is planning to release the updat

Server Administrators are being urged to update their Ruby on Rails servers following the discovery of an active malware campaign targeting vulnerable versions of the web development framework. According to security researcher Jeff Jarmoc , Hackers are exploiting a known and patched vulnerability in coding language Ruby on Rails, which allows a remote user to edit the web server's crontab to download a file to the /tmp directory where it is compiled and executed. The exploit that is currently being used by attackers adds a custom cron job (a scheduled task on Linux machines) that executes a sequence of commands. " Functionality is limited, but includes the ability to download and execute files as commanded, as well as changing servers ," Jarmoc blogged. " There's no authentication performed, so an enterprising individual could hijack these bots fairly easily by joining the IRC server and issuing the appropriate commands ." The original fla

This coming Tuesday, Microsoft will issue fixes for 33 vulnerabilities in total, including two critical  zero-day flaws relating to Internet Explorer recently discovered that has been used to attack several high-profile targets. Internet Explorer 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 are the recipients of a patch that can prevent an exploit that enables remote code execution in the browser. This affects all Windows operating systems except XP. The vulnerability ( CVE-​​2013-​​1347 ) had previously been addressed in a workaround yesterday , but given the way it was being exploited with attacks reported on the US Department of Labor and European aerospace and nuclear researchers the patch has been prioritised. A second bulletin deals with another IE vulnerability believed to be one disclosed in March at the annual Pwn2Own hacking competition. At least four of the patches require a restart, Microsoft said. The remaining eight patches will address flaws that range from denial-of-servic

Security researchers revealed that series of " Watering Hole " has been conducted exploiting a IE8 zero-day vulnerability to target U.S. Government experts working on nuclear weapons research. The news is not surprising but it is very concerning, the principal targets of the attacks are various groups of research such as the components of U.S. Department of Labor and the U.S. Department of Energy, the news has been confirmed by principal security firms and by Microsoft corporate. The flaw has been used in a series of "watering hole" attacks, let's remind that "Watering Hole" is a technique of attack realized compromising legitimate websites using a " drive-by " exploit. The attackers restrict their audience to a individuals interested to specific content proposed by targeted website, in this way when the victim visits the page a backdoor Trojan is installed on his computer. The website compromised to exploit the IE8 zero-day is the Dep

Google has fixed a series of serious vulnerabilities in its Chrome OS , including three high-risk bugs that could be used for code execution on vulnerable machines. Bug bounties is the cash prizes offered by open source communities to anyone who finds key software bugs have been steadily on the rise for several years now. As part of its reward program, Google paid out $31,336 to a researcher who found three of the vulnerabilities . Google's post notes : " We're pleased to reward Ralf-Philipp Weinmann $31,336 under the Chromium Vulnerability Rewards Program for a chain of three bugs, including demo exploit code and very detailed write-up. We are grateful to Ralf for his work to help keep our users safe. " The three-bug chain credited to Weinmann exploited O3D, a JavaScript API (application programming interface) designed for crafting interactive 3-D graphics-based Web applications. The API and supporting browser plug-in were created by Google, with a preliminary ve

Microsoft has released an advance notification of 9 security bulletins that it plans to release on April 9, 2013. Microsoft said it will patch nine vulnerabilities in total and two of them rated critical and that of the remaining 7 as Important. The critical vulnerabilities are remote code execution issues. First vulnerability affects Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer while the second vulnerability affects Microsoft Windows.  The vulnerability will fix a flaw that allows a drive-by attack, which hackers can exploit to attack machines running the software using malware loaded websites. Earlier this year, Microsoft released an emergency update for Internet Explorer after all the commotion about the security holes in Java. The update aimed to patch a security vulnerability in Internet Explorer that is being used for attacks on government contractors and other organisations. The remaining 7 vulnerabilities pertain to issues affecting Microsoft Office, Microsoft Server Software a

Last Friday, we reported that the website of the U.S. Council of Foreign Relations was allegedly compromised by Chinese hackers who exploited the zero-day bug that was only discovered that same day. The CFR website was compromised with JavaScript that served malicious code to older IE browsers and the code then created a heap-spray attack using Adobe Flash Player. Yesterday former hacker Bryce Case Jr (YTCracker) tweeted about a new zero day exploit threatening all users of IE8, " internet explorer 6-8 0day making the rounds force them toolbar installs and keyloggers on exgf while you still can... ". On Saturday, Microsoft published a security advisory warning users of Internet Explorer 6, 7, and 8 that they could be vulnerable to remote code execution hacks. The vulnerability is a remote code execution vulnerability that exists in the way that Internet Explorer accesses an object in memory that has been deleted or has not been properly allocated. The vuln

With the release of the Microsoft security bulletins for December 2012, Company flag total 7 updates for Windows users, where one is rated as critical that could lead to remote code execution, where as other two are rated as important which fix flaws that could result in the operating system's security features being bypassed. All of the IE fixes involve use-after-free memory vulnerabilities. Where as kernel level exploits bundled into mass-exploitation kits is like Blackhole. In addition to IE, Microsoft is fixing a critical flaw in Microsoft Word that could enable attackers to execute remote code. The vulnerability could be exploited by way of a malformed Rich Text Format (RTF) document. Also Fonts can also be used as a potential attack vector, as this Patch Tuesday reveals. A pair of critical font parsing vulnerabilities are being patched this month, one for OpenType and the other for TrueType fonts. Details of all Updates : MS12-077 – All versions of

Cisco Prime DCNM is a management tools for your Storage and Ethernet Networks, provides a robust framework and comprehensive feature set that meets the routing, switching, and storage administration needs of present and future virtualized data centers. According to an  advisory released, Cisco Prime Data Center Network Manager (DCNM) contains a remote command execution vulnerability that may allow a remote, unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary commands on the computer that is running the Cisco Prime DCNM application. The vulnerability exists because JBoss Application Server Remote Method Invocation (RMI) services, specifically the jboss.system:service=MainDeployer functionality, are exposed to unauthorized users. All Cisco Prime Data Center Network Manager releases prior to release 6.1(1), for both the Microsoft Windows and Linux platforms, are affected by this vulnerability. Successful exploitation of the vulnerability may allow an unauthenticated, rem