Application Security | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Let's face it: AppSec and developers often feel like they're on opposing teams. You're battling endless vulnerabilities while they just want to ship code. Sound familiar? It's a common challenge, but there is a solution. Ever wish they proactively cared about security? The answer lies in a proven, but often overlooked, strategy: Security Champion Programs — a way to turn developers from adversaries into security advocates? Join our upcoming FREE webinar, " Turn Developers into Allies: The Power of Security Champion Programs, " to discover the secrets behind this game-changing approach. In this webinar, you'll learn: Overcoming the Resistance: Proven tactics to bridge the gap between developers and security, fostering a spirit of collaboration and trust. The Power of Effective Communication: Learn how to make security messaging resonate with developers, without the jargon overload. Creating a Culture of Champions: Discover how to build a Securi

A trio of security flaws has been uncovered in the CocoaPods dependency manager for Swift and Objective-C Cocoa projects that could be exploited to stage software supply chain attacks, putting downstream customers at severe risks. The vulnerabilities allow "any malicious actor to claim ownership over thousands of unclaimed pods and insert malicious code into many of the most popular iOS and macOS applications," E.V.A Information Security researchers Reef Spektor and Eran Vaknin said in a report published today. The Israeli application security firm said the three issues have since been patched by CocoaPods as of October 2023. The project maintainers also reset all user sessions at the time in response to the disclosures. One of the vulnerabilities is CVE-2024-38368 (CVSS score: 9.3), which makes it possible for an attacker to abuse the " Claim Your Pods " process and take control of a package, effectively allowing them to tamper with the source code and int

As a vCISO, you are responsible for your client's cybersecurity strategy and risk governance. This incorporates multiple disciplines, from research to execution to reporting. Recently, we published a comprehensive playbook for vCISOs, "Your First 100 Days as a vCISO – 5 Steps to Success" , which covers all the phases entailed in launching a successful vCISO engagement, along with recommended actions to take, and step-by-step examples.  Following the success of the playbook and the requests that have come in from the MSP/MSSP community, we decided to drill down into specific parts of vCISO reporting and provide more color and examples. In this article, we focus on how to create compelling narratives within a report, which has a significant impact on the overall MSP/MSSP value proposition.  This article brings the highlights of a recent guided workshop we held, covering what makes a successful report and how it can be used to enhance engagement with your cyber security clients.

Traditional application security practices are not effective in the modern DevOps world. When security scans are run only at the end of the software delivery lifecycle (either right before or after a service is deployed), the ensuing process of compiling and fixing vulnerabilities creates massive overhead for developers. The overhead that degrades velocity and puts production deadlines at risk. Regulatory pressure to ensure the integrity of all software components is also ramping up dramatically. Applications are built with an increasing number of open source software (OSS) components and other 3rd party artifacts, each of which can introduce new vulnerabilities to the application. Attackers seek to exploit these components' vulnerabilities, which also puts the software's consumers at risk. Software represents the largest under-addressed attack surface that organizations face. Some interesting statistics to digest: More than 80% of software vulnerabilities are introduced through o

Several popular Android applications available in Google Play Store are susceptible to a path traversal-affiliated vulnerability codenamed the Dirty Stream attack that could be exploited by a malicious app to overwrite arbitrary files in the vulnerable app's home directory. "The implications of this vulnerability pattern include arbitrary code execution and token theft, depending on an application's implementation," Dimitrios Valsamaras of the Microsoft Threat Intelligence team  said  in a report published Wednesday. Successful exploitation could allow an attacker to take full control of the application's behavior and leverage the stolen tokens to gain unauthorized access to the victim's online accounts and other data. Two of the apps that were found vulnerable to the problem are as follows - Xiaomi File Manager (com.mi. Android.globalFileexplorer) - Over 1 billion installs WPS Office (cn.wps.moffice_eng) - Over 500 million installs While Android implem

Google on Monday revealed that almost 200,000 app submissions to its Play Store for Android were either rejected or remediated to address issues with access to sensitive data such as location or SMS messages over the past year. The tech giant also said it blocked 333,000 bad accounts from the app storefront in 2023 for attempting to distribute malware or for repeated policy violations. "In 2023, we prevented 2.28 million policy-violating apps from being published on Google Play in part thanks to our investment in new and improved security features, policy updates, and advanced machine learning and app review processes," Google's Steve Kafka, Khawaja Shams, and Mohet Saxena said . "To help safeguard user privacy at scale, we partnered with SDK providers to limit sensitive data access and sharing, enhancing the privacy posture for over 31 SDKs impacting 790K+ apps." In comparison, Google  fended off 1.43 million bad apps  from being published to the Play Sto

Fake browser updates are being used to push a previously undocumented Android malware called  Brokewell . "Brokewell is a typical modern banking malware equipped with both data-stealing and remote-control capabilities built into the malware," Dutch security firm ThreatFabric  said  in an analysis published Thursday. The malware is said to be in active development, adding new commands to capture touch events, textual information displayed on screen, and the applications a victim launches. The list of Brokewell apps that masquerade as Google Chrome, ID Austria, and Klarna is as follows - jcwAz.EpLIq.vcAZiUGZpK (Google Chrome) zRFxj.ieubP.lWZzwlluca (ID Austria) com.brkwl.upstracking (Klarna) Like other recent Android malware families of its kind, Brokewell is capable of getting around restrictions imposed by Google that prevent sideloaded apps from requesting  accessibility service permissions . The banking trojan, once installed and launched for the first time, pro

Researchers have identified a dependency confusion vulnerability impacting an archived Apache project called Cordova App Harness . Dependency confusion attacks  take place owing to the fact that package managers check the public repositories before private registries, thus allowing a threat actor to publish a malicious package with the same name to a public package repository. This causes the package manager to inadvertently download the fraudulent package from the public repository instead of the intended private repository. If successful, it can have serious consequences, such as infecting all downstream customers that install the package. A May 2023 analysis of npm and PyPI packages stored in cloud environments by enterprise security company Orca  revealed  that nearly 49% of organizations are vulnerable to a dependency confusion attack. While npm and other package managers have since introduced fixes to prioritize the private versions, application security firm Legit Security

The Android banking trojan known as Vultur has resurfaced with a suite of new features and improved anti-analysis and detection evasion techniques, enabling its operators to remotely interact with a mobile device and harvest sensitive data. "Vultur has also started masquerading more of its malicious activity by encrypting its C2 communication, using multiple encrypted payloads that are decrypted on the fly, and using the guise of legitimate applications to carry out its malicious actions," NCC Group researcher Joshua Kamp  said  in a report published last week. Vultur was  first disclosed  in early 2021, with the malware capable of leveraging Android's accessibility services APIs to execute its malicious actions. The malware has been observed to be  distributed via trojanized dropper apps  on the Google Play Store, masquerading as authenticator and productivity apps to trick unwitting users into installing them. These dropper apps are offered as part of a dropper-as-a

Low-code/no-code (LCNC) and robotic process automation (RPA) have gained immense popularity, but how secure are they? Is your security team paying enough attention in an era of rapid digital transformation, where business users are empowered to create applications swiftly using platforms like Microsoft PowerApps, UiPath, ServiceNow, Mendix, and OutSystems? The simple truth is often swept under the rug. While low-code/no-code (LCNC) apps and robotic process automations (RPA) drive efficiency and agility, their dark security side demands scrutiny. LCNC application security emerges as a relatively new frontier, and even seasoned security practitioners and security teams grapple with the dynamic nature and sheer volume of citizen-developed applications. The accelerated pace of LCNC development poses a unique challenge for security professionals, underscoring the need for dedicated efforts and solutions to effectively address the security nuances of low-code development environments. Dig

Citrix is  alerting  users of a critical security flaw in NetScaler Application Delivery Controller (ADC) and Gateway that it said is being actively exploited in the wild. Tracked as  CVE-2023-3519  (CVSS score: 9.8), the issue relates to a case of  code injection  that could result in unauthenticated remote code execution. It impacts the following versions - NetScaler ADC and NetScaler Gateway 13.1 before 13.1-49.13 NetScaler ADC and NetScaler Gateway 13.0 before 13.0-91.13 NetScaler ADC and NetScaler Gateway version 12.1 (currently end-of-life) NetScaler ADC 13.1-FIPS before 13.1-37.159 NetScaler ADC 12.1-FIPS before 12.1-55.297, and NetScaler ADC 12.1-NDcPP before 12.1-55.297 The company did not give further details on the flaw tied to CVE-2023-3519 other than to say that exploits for the flaw have been observed on "unmitigated appliances." However, successful exploitation requires the device to be configured as a Gateway (VPN virtual server, ICA Proxy, CVPN, RD

It might come as a surprise, but secrets management has become the elephant in the AppSec room. While security vulnerabilities like Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) often make headlines in the cybersecurity world, secrets management remains an overlooked issue that can have immediate and impactful consequences for corporate safety.  A recent study by GitGuardian found that 75% of IT decision-makers in the US and the UK reported at least one secret leaked from an application, with 60% causing issues for the company or employees. Shockingly, less than half of respondents (48%) were confident in their ability to protect application secrets "to a great extent." The study, named  Voice of Practitioners: The State of Secrets in AppSec  (available for free download  here ), provides a fresh perspective on managing secrets, which is often reduced to clichés that do not reflect the operational reality in engineering departments.  Despite their ubiquity in modern cloud a

If you're involved in securing the applications your organization develops, there is no question that Static Application Security Testing (SAST) solutions are an important part of a comprehensive application security strategy. SAST secures software, supports business more securely, cuts down on costs, reduces risk, and speeds time to development, delivery, and deployment of mission-critical applications.  SAST scans code early during development, so your AppSec team won't be scrambling to fix unexpected vulnerabilities right before that big launch is planned. You'll avoid surprises and launch delays without inadvertently releasing risky software to customers — or into production.  But if you consider SAST as a part of a larger AppSec platform, crucial for those who wish to  shift security everywhere  possible in the software development life cycle (SDLC), some SAST solutions outshine others.  Knowing what to focus on With a plethora of players in the market, sometimes

The most precious asset in today's information age is the secret safeguarded under lock and key. Regrettably, maintaining secrets has become increasingly challenging, as highlighted by the  2023 State of Secrets Sprawl  report, the largest analysis of public GitHub activity.  The report shows a  67% year-over-year increase  in the number of secrets found, with 10 million hard-coded secrets detected in 2022 alone. This alarming surge in secrets sprawl highlights  the need for action  and underscores the importance of secure software development. Secrets sprawl refers to secrets appearing in plaintext in various sources, such as source code, build scripts, infrastructure as code, logs, etc. While secrets like API tokens and private keys securely connect the components of the modern software supply chain, their widespread distribution among developers, machines, applications, and infrastructure systems heightens the likelihood of leaks. Cybersecurity Incidents Highlight the Danger

In the fast-paced cybersecurity landscape, product security takes center stage. DevSecOps swoops in, seamlessly merging security practices into DevOps, empowering teams to tackle challenges. Let's dive into DevSecOps and explore how collaboration can give your team the edge to fight cyber villains. Application security and product security Regrettably, application security teams often intervene late in the development process. They maintain the security level of exposed software, ensuring the integrity and confidentiality of consumed or produced data. They focus on securing data flows, isolating environments with firewalls, and implementing strong user authentication and access control. Product security teams aim to guarantee the intrinsic reliability of applications. They recommend tools and resources, making them available to developers and operations. In the DevSecOps approach, each team is responsible for the security of the applications they create. These teams apply secur