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Experts Reveal Google Cloud Platform's Blind Spot for Data Exfiltration Attacks

Experts Reveal Google Cloud Platform's Blind Spot for Data Exfiltration Attacks

Mar 06, 2023 Cloud Computing / Data Safety
Malicious actors can take advantage of "insufficient" forensic visibility into Google Cloud Platform (GCP) to exfiltrate sensitive data, a new research has found. "Unfortunately, GCP does not provide the level of visibility in its storage logs that is needed to allow any effective forensic investigation, making organizations blind to potential data exfiltration attacks," cloud incident response firm Mitiga  said  in a report. The attack banks on the prerequisite that the adversary is able to gain control of an identity and access management (IAM) entity in the targeted organization by methods like social engineering to access the GCP environment. The crux of the problem is that GCP's  storage access logs  do not provide adequate transparency with regards to potential file access and read events, instead grouping them all as a single "Object Get" activity. "The same event is used for a wide variety of types of access, including: Reading a fil
Critical VMware Cloud Director Bug Could Let Hackers Takeover Entire Cloud Infrastructure

Critical VMware Cloud Director Bug Could Let Hackers Takeover Entire Cloud Infrastructure

Apr 15, 2022
Cloud computing and virtualization technology firm VMWare on Thursday rolled out an update to resolve a critical security flaw in its Cloud Director product that could be weaponized to launch remote code execution attacks. The issue, assigned the identifier  CVE-2022-22966 , has a CVSS score of 9.1 out of a maximum of 10. VMware credited security researcher Jari Jääskelä with reporting the flaw. "An authenticated, high privileged malicious actor with network access to the VMware Cloud Director tenant or provider may be able to exploit a remote code execution vulnerability to gain access to the server," VMware  said  in an advisory. VMware Cloud Director, formerly known as vCloud Director, is used by many well-known cloud providers to operate and manage their cloud infrastructures and gain visibility into datacenters across sites and geographies. The vulnerability could, in other words, end up allowing attackers to gain access to sensitive data and take over private clou
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Finding Attack Paths in Cloud Environments

Finding Attack Paths in Cloud Environments

Apr 12, 2022
The mass adoption of cloud infrastructure is fully justified by innumerable advantages. As a result, today, organizations' most sensitive business applications, workloads, and data are in the cloud. Hackers, good and bad, have noticed that trend and effectively evolved their attack techniques to match this new tantalizing target landscape. With threat actors' high reactivity and adaptability, it is recommended to assume that organizations are under attack and that some user accounts or applications might already have been compromised. Finding out exactly which assets are put at risk through compromised accounts or breached assets requires mapping potential attack paths across a comprehensive map of all the relationships between assets.  Today, mapping potential attack paths is performed with scanning tools such as AzureHound or AWSPX. Those are graph-based tools enabling the visualization of assets and resources relationships within the related cloud service provider. By r
Eltima SDK Contain Multiple Vulnerabilities Affecting Several Cloud Service Provides

Eltima SDK Contain Multiple Vulnerabilities Affecting Several Cloud Service Provides

Dec 07, 2021
Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed multiple vulnerabilities in a third-party driver software developed by Eltima that have been "unwittingly inherited" by cloud desktop solutions like Amazon Workspaces, Accops, and NoMachine and could provide attackers a path to perform an array of malicious activities. "These vulnerabilities allow attackers to escalate privileges enabling them to disable security products, overwrite system components, corrupt the operating system, or perform malicious operations unimpeded," SentinelOne Senior Security Researcher, Kasif Dekel, said in a report shared with The Hacker News. The 27 flaws have since been addressed in Amazon Nimble Studio AMI, Amazon NICE DCV, Amazon WorkSpaces, Amazon AppStream, NoMachine, Accops HyWorks, Accops HyWorks DVM Tools, Eltima USB Network Gate, Amzetta zPortal Windows zClient, Amzetta zPortal DVM Tools, FlexiHub, and Donglify. At its core, the issues reside in a product developed by Eltima that of
Researchers Discover First Known Malware Targeting Windows Containers

Researchers Discover First Known Malware Targeting Windows Containers

Jun 07, 2021
Security researchers have discovered the first known malware, dubbed " Siloscope ," targeting Windows Server containers to infect Kubernetes clusters in cloud environments. "Siloscape is heavily obfuscated malware targeting Kubernetes clusters through Windows containers,"  said  Unit 42 researcher Daniel Prizmant. "Its main purpose is to open a backdoor into poorly configured Kubernetes clusters in order to run malicious containers such as, but not limited to, cryptojackers." Siloscape, first detected in March 2021, is characterized by several techniques, including targeting common cloud applications such as web servers to gain an initial foothold via known vulnerabilities, following which it leverages Windows container escape techniques to break out of the confines of the container and gain remote code execution on the underlying node. A container is an  isolated, lightweight silo  for running an application on the host operating system. The malware&
NSA Warns Russian Hacker Exploiting VMware Bug to Breach Corporate Networks

NSA Warns Russian Hacker Exploiting VMware Bug to Breach Corporate Networks

Dec 08, 2020
The US National Security Agency (NSA) on Monday issued an  advisory  warning that Russian threat actors are leveraging recently disclosed VMware vulnerability to install malware on corporate systems and access protected data. Specifics regarding the identities of the threat actor exploiting the  VMware flaw  or when these attacks started were not disclosed. The development comes two weeks after the virtualization software company publicly disclosed the flaw—affecting VMware Workspace One Access, Access Connector, Identity Manager, and Identity Manager Connector products for Windows and Linux—without releasing a patch and three days after releasing a software update to fix it. In late November, VMware pushed  temporary workarounds  to address the issue, stating permanent patches for the flaw were "forthcoming." But it wasn't until December 3rd the escalation-of-privileges bug was entirely resolved. That same day, the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agenc
Hackers Breach LineageOS, Ghost, DigiCert Servers Using SaltStack Vulnerability

Hackers Breach LineageOS, Ghost, DigiCert Servers Using SaltStack Vulnerability

May 04, 2020
Days after cybersecurity researchers sounded the alarm over two critical vulnerabilities in the SaltStack configuration framework , a hacking campaign has already begun exploiting the flaws to breach servers of LineageOS, Ghost, and DigiCert. Tracked as CVE-2020-11651 and CVE-2020-11652 , the disclosed flaws could allow an adversary to execute arbitrary code on remote servers deployed in data centers and cloud environments. The issues were fixed by SaltStack in a release published on April 29th. "We expect that any competent hacker will be able to create 100% reliable exploits for these issues in under 24 hours," F-Secure researchers had previously warned in an advisory last week. LineageOS, a maker of an open-source operating system based on Android, said it detected the intrusion on May 2nd at around 8 pm Pacific Time. "Around 8 pm PST on May 2nd, 2020, an attacker used a CVE in our SaltStack master to gain access to our infrastructure," the company n
Critical SaltStack RCE Bug (CVSS Score 10) Affects Thousands of Data Centers

Critical SaltStack RCE Bug (CVSS Score 10) Affects Thousands of Data Centers

May 01, 2020
Two severe security flaws have been discovered in the open-source SaltStack Salt configuration framework that could allow an adversary to execute arbitrary code on remote servers deployed in data centers and cloud environments. The vulnerabilities were identified by F-Secure researchers earlier this March and disclosed on Thursday, a day after SaltStack released a patch (version 3000.2) addressing the issues , rated with CVSS score 10. "The vulnerabilities, allocated CVE IDs CVE-2020-11651 and CVE-2020-11652 , are of two different classes," the cybersecurity firm said . "One being authentication bypass where functionality was unintentionally exposed to unauthenticated network clients, the other being directory traversal where untrusted input (i.e., parameters in network requests) was not sanitized correctly allowing unconstrained access to the entire filesystem of the master server." The researchers warned that the flaws could be exploited in the wild imm
How to transform your revolutionary idea into a reality: $100K Nokia Bell Labs Prize

How to transform your revolutionary idea into a reality: $100K Nokia Bell Labs Prize

Apr 15, 2020
Revolutionary ideas in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics don't occur every day. But when those "eureka" moments happen, we need to provide a forum to explore those ideas, judge them on their merits, and distinguish the extraordinary from the merely good. Once a year, Nokia Bell Labs makes that forum a reality, where robust proposals that have the potential to revolutionize the future of human experience are presented and debated. If you think your idea could be one of them, the Nokia Bell Labs Prize is for you. Solving challenges that connect humans, systems, things, infrastructure, or processes, the 2020 Nokia Bell Labs Prize is an opportunity for innovators around the world to collaborate with world-renowned Nokia Bell Labs researchers and transform their ideas into prototypes of the future. What kind of ideas are we talking about? Big, bold, and bordering on audacious, they should have far-reaching, humanity-changing implications. Previous
Microsoft Azure Flaws Could Have Let Hackers Take Over Cloud Servers

Microsoft Azure Flaws Could Have Let Hackers Take Over Cloud Servers

Jan 30, 2020
Cybersecurity researchers at Check Point today disclosed details of two recently patched potentially dangerous vulnerabilities in Microsoft Azure services that, if exploited, could have allowed hackers to target several businesses that run their web and mobile apps on Azure. Azure App Service is a fully-managed integrated service that enables users to create web and mobile apps for any platform or device, and easily integrate them with SaaS solutions, on-premises apps to automate business processes. According to a report researchers shared with The Hacker News, the first security vulnerability ( CVE-2019-1234 ) is a request spoofing issue that affected Azure Stack, a hybrid cloud computing software solution by Microsoft. If exploited, the issue would have enabled a remote hacker to unauthorizedly access screenshots and sensitive information of any virtual machine running on Azure infrastructure—it doesn't matter if they're running on a shared, dedicated or isolated vir
IBM Buys "Red Hat" Open-Source Software Company for $34 Billion

IBM Buys "Red Hat" Open-Source Software Company for $34 Billion

Oct 29, 2018
It's been quite a year for the open source platforms. Earlier this year, Microsoft acquired popular code repository hosting service GitHub for $7.5 billion , and now IBM has just announced the biggest open-source business deal ever. IBM today confirmed that it would be acquiring open source Linux firm Red Hat for $190 per share in cash, working out to a total value of approximately $34 billion. Red Hat, known for its Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) operating system, is a leading software company that offers open-source software products to the enterprise community. Even Oracle uses Red Hat's source code for its Oracle Linux product. Red Hat's last year revenue was $2.4 billion, and this year the company has earned $2.9 billion. But if Red Hat products are open source and updates are free, you might be wondering how does the company earn. Red Hat was one of the first companies who found a successful way to make money from free open-source software. It offers consul
Microsoft creates its own FreeBSD VM Image for Azure Cloud Computing Platform

Microsoft creates its own FreeBSD VM Image for Azure Cloud Computing Platform

Jun 09, 2016
This year, Microsoft impressed the world with 'Microsoft loves Linux' announcements, like developing a custom Linux-based OS for running Azure Cloud Switch, selecting Ubuntu as the operating system for its Cloud-based Big Data services and bringing the popular Bash shell to Windows 10 . Now, the next big news for open-source community: Microsoft has released its own custom distribution of FreeBSD 10.3 as a "ready-made" Virtual Machine image in order to make the operating system available directly from the Azure Marketplace. FreeBSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) is an open source Unix-like advanced computer operating system used to power modern servers, desktops as well as embedded systems. Until now, the only way for Azure customers to run FreeBSD was to make use of a custom image from outside of Azure (from the FreeBSD Foundation). However, the new release makes it easier for Azure users to launch FreeBSD directly from the Azure Marketplace and get
Want to Use Quantum Computer? IBM launches One for Free

Want to Use Quantum Computer? IBM launches One for Free

May 05, 2016
In Brief What would you do if you get access to a Quantum Computer? IBM Scientists launches the world's first cloud-based quantum computing technology, calling the IBM Quantum Experience, for anyone to use. It is an online simulator that lets anyone run algorithms and experiments on the company's five-qubit quantum computer. Quantum computers are expected to take the computing technology to the highest level, but it is an experimental and enormously complex technology that Google and NASA are working on and is just a dream for general users to play with. Hold on! IBM is trying to make your dream a reality. IBM just made its new quantum computing project online ( with tutorials ), making it available for free to anyone interested in playing with it. Quantum Computers — Now A Reality! The technology company said on Wednesday that it is giving the world access to one of its quantum computing processors, which is yet an experimental technology that has the potential
Microsoft Chooses Ubuntu Linux for their Cloud-based Azure HDInsight Big Data Solution

Microsoft Chooses Ubuntu Linux for their Cloud-based Azure HDInsight Big Data Solution

Sep 30, 2015
Earlier this month, Microsoft surprised us all with the announcement that they built a Linux kernel-based operating system, Azure Cloud Switch (ACS) , for developing software products for Network Devices. Now, Microsoft just announced that they have selected Ubuntu as the operating system for their Cloud-based Big Data services. Yes, Microsoft needs Linux. To expand its Azure Data Lake project, that makes Big Data processing and Analytics simpler and more accessible, Microsoft has partnered with Hortonworks and Canonical to launch " Azure HDInsight " for Linux users. Azure HDInsight is a Hadoop-based Big Data solution powered by Cloud that is now also available for Ubuntu, along with Windows OS. By offering both Windows and Linux clusters, Microsoft's fulfills its aim to enhance its own cross-platform aspirations that will accelerate a move towards Hybrid Cloud Computing . " The collaboration between Microsoft and Canonical to create the option to run Azur
Microsoft has Built its own Linux Operating System

Microsoft has Built its own Linux Operating System

Sep 18, 2015
Sit Tight on your seats, because you're gonna get a Shock. Microsoft has developed an Operating System powered by LINUX. Close your mouth first. It's True! Microsoft has built its own Linux-based operating system called Azure Cloud Switch (ACS ) and believe me, under Satya Nadella, Microsoft has become more open than ever. According to the announcement made through an official blog post on Microsoft website, Azure Cloud Switch (ACS) describes as "cross-platform modular operating system for data center networking built on Linux." or Simply, " Commodity switch software stack for data center networks". The Purpose of developing Linux-based Azure Cloud Switch (ACS) operating system at Microsoft is to make it simpler to control the hardware from multiple vendors ( such as Switches ) that powers their cloud-based services. And here's the Kicker: "Running on Linux, ACS [Azure Cloud Switch] is able to make use of its vibrant eco
Mouse-Box — An Entire Computer inside a Mouse

Mouse-Box — An Entire Computer inside a Mouse

Jan 24, 2015
Smartphones in our pockets are exponentially smaller and more powerful that they don't realize the need to carry laptops with us everywhere. Now imagine if a small mouse meets the need of the entire PC? Not just imagination, it has been proved and done by the engineers at a Polish startup. Poland-based Przemysław Strzelczyk and a team of software developers working on a new concept have created what they believe is the future of desktop computing — a mouse that's also a PC. Called " Mouse-Box ", a wireless gadget that packs a 1.4 GHz quad-core ARM processor, a micro-HDMI port, WiFi up to 802.11n, accelerometer, gyroscope, two USB 3.0 ports and 128 GB storage space into a mouse. The only extra hardware needed is a monitor. Mouse Box comes with the same amount of storage as a high-end iPhone 6 Plus , but we know that nobody will be able to work for long with so little storage. The storage capacity can't be physically expanded, but can be extended with the use of clou
Google App Engine — More than 30 Vulnerabilities Discovered

Google App Engine — More than 30 Vulnerabilities Discovered

Dec 08, 2014
Security researchers have discovered a number of critical vulnerabilities in the Java environment of the Google App Engine (GAE) that enables attackers to bypass critical security sandbox defenses. Google App Engine is Google's PaaS (Platform as a Service) Cloud computing Platform for developing and hosting web applications in Google-managed data centers. GAE offers to run custom-built programs using a wide variety of popular languages and frameworks, out of which many are built on the Java environment. The vulnerabilities was reported by Security Explorations, the same security research company that carried out multiple researches related to Java in past. The discovery was announced on the Full Disclosure security mailing list by Adam Gowdiak , founder and CEO of Security Explorations. According to the security firm, the flaws can be exploited by attackers to achieve a complete Java VM security sandbox escape, as well as to execute an arbitrary code. The researchers
Cloud computing best for password hacking !

Cloud computing best for password hacking !

Nov 20, 2010
On-demand cloud computing is a wonderful tool for companies that need some computing capacity for a short time, but don't want to invest in fixed capital for long term. For the same reasons, cloud computing can be very useful to hackers.  A lot of hacking activities involve cracking passwords , keys or other forms of brute force that are computationally expensive but highly parallelizable. For a hacker, there are two great sources for on-demand computing: botnets made of consumer PCs and infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) from a service provider. Either one can deliver computing on-demand for the purpose of brute force computation. Botnets are unreliable, heterogeneous and will take longer to "provision." But they cost nothing to use and can scale to enormous size. Researchers have found botnets composed of hundreds of thousands of PCs. A commercial cloud computing offering will be faster to provision, have predictable performance and can be billed to
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