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Category — FreeBSD
FreeBSD Releases Urgent Patch for High-Severity OpenSSH Vulnerability

FreeBSD Releases Urgent Patch for High-Severity OpenSSH Vulnerability

Aug 12, 2024 Cybersecurity / Network Security
The maintainers of the FreeBSD Project have released security updates to address a high-severity flaw in OpenSSH that attackers could potentially exploit to execute arbitrary code remotely with elevated privileges. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-7589 , carries a CVSS score of 7.4 out of a maximum of 10.0, indicating high severity. "A signal handler in sshd(8) may call a logging function that is not async-signal-safe," according to an advisory released last week. "The signal handler is invoked when a client does not authenticate within the LoginGraceTime seconds (120 by default). This signal handler executes in the context of the sshd(8)'s privileged code, which is not sandboxed and runs with full root privileges." OpenSSH is an implementation of the secure shell (SSH) protocol suite, providing encrypted and authenticated transport for a variety of services, including remote shell access. CVE-2024-7589 has been described as "another instance...
Critical Ping Vulnerability Allows Remote Attackers to Take Over FreeBSD Systems

Critical Ping Vulnerability Allows Remote Attackers to Take Over FreeBSD Systems

Dec 05, 2022 Endpoint Security / Pen Testing
The maintainers of the FreeBSD operating system have released updates to remediate a security vulnerability impacting the ping module that could be potentially exploited to crash the program or trigger remote code execution. The issue, assigned the identifier  CVE-2022-23093 , impacts all supported versions of FreeBSD and concerns a  stack-based buffer overflow  vulnerability in the  ping service . "ping reads raw IP packets from the network to process responses in the pr_pack() function," according to an  advisory  published last week. "The pr_pack() copies received IP and  ICMP  headers into stack buffers for further processing. In so doing, it fails to take into account the possible presence of IP option headers following the IP header in either the response or the quoted packet." As a consequence, the destination buffer could be overflowed by up to 40 bytes when the IP option headers are present. The FreeBSD Project noted that the ping ...
7 PAM Best Practices to Secure Hybrid and Multi-Cloud Environments

7 PAM Best Practices to Secure Hybrid and Multi-Cloud Environments

Dec 04, 2024Risk Management / Zero Trust
Are you using the cloud or thinking about transitioning? Undoubtedly, multi-cloud and hybrid environments offer numerous benefits for organizations. However, the cloud's flexibility, scalability, and efficiency come with significant risk — an expanded attack surface. The decentralization that comes with utilizing multi-cloud environments can also lead to limited visibility into user activity and poor access management.  Privileged accounts with access to your critical systems and sensitive data are among the most vulnerable elements in cloud setups. When mismanaged, these accounts open the doors to unauthorized access, potential malicious activity, and data breaches. That's why strong privileged access management (PAM) is indispensable. PAM plays an essential role in addressing the security challenges of complex infrastructures by enforcing strict access controls and managing the life cycle of privileged accounts. By employing PAM in hybrid and cloud environments, you're not...
Severe Auth Bypass and Priv-Esc Vulnerabilities Disclosed in OpenBSD

Severe Auth Bypass and Priv-Esc Vulnerabilities Disclosed in OpenBSD

Dec 05, 2019
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...
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The AppSec & R&D Playbook: How to Align Security and Innovation

websiteBackslashApplication Security
AppSec vs. R&D? Bridge the gap with clear steps to streamline workflows and foster collaboration.
UNIX Co-Founder Ken Thompson's BSD Password Has Finally Been Cracked

UNIX Co-Founder Ken Thompson's BSD Password Has Finally Been Cracked

Oct 11, 2019
A 39-year-old password of Ken Thompson , the co-creator of the UNIX operating system among, has finally been cracked that belongs to a BSD-based system, one of the original versions of UNIX, which was back then used by various computer science pioneers. In 2014, developer Leah Neukirchen spotted an interesting " /etc/passwd " file in a publicly available source tree of historian BSD version 3, which includes hashed passwords belonging to more than two dozens Unix luminaries who worked on UNIX development, including Dennis Ritchie, Stephen R. Bourne, Ken Thompson, Eric Schmidt, Stuart Feldman, and Brian W. Kernighan. Since all passwords in that list are protected using now-depreciated DES-based crypt(3) algorithm and limited to at most 8 characters, Neukirchen decided to brute-force them for fun and successfully cracked passwords (listed below) for almost everyone using password cracking tools like John the Ripper and hashcat. The ones that she wasn't able to crack...
New Flaws Re-Enable DMA Attacks On Wide Range of Modern Computers

New Flaws Re-Enable DMA Attacks On Wide Range of Modern Computers

Feb 27, 2019
Security researchers have discovered a new class of security vulnerabilities that impacts all major operating systems, including Microsoft Windows, Apple macOS, Linux, and FreeBSD, allowing attackers to bypass protection mechanisms introduced to defend against DMA attacks. Known for years, Direct memory access (DMA)-based attacks let an attacker compromise a targeted computer in a matter of seconds by plugging-in a malicious hot plug device—such as an external network card, mouse, keyboard, printer, storage, and graphics card—into Thunderbolt 3 port or the latest USB-C port . The DMA-based attacks are possible because Thunderbolt port allows connected peripherals to bypass operating system security policies and directly read/write system memory that contains sensitive information including your passwords, banking logins, private files, and browser activity. That means, simply plugging in an infected device, created using tools like Interception , can manipulate the contents o...
A Decade Old Unix/Linux/BSD Root Privilege-Escalation Bug Discovered

A Decade Old Unix/Linux/BSD Root Privilege-Escalation Bug Discovered

Jun 20, 2017
Update: Find working Exploits and Proof-of-Concepts at the bottom of this article. Security researchers have discovered more than a decade-old vulnerability in several Unix-based operating systems — including Linux, OpenBSD, NetBSD, FreeBSD and Solaris — which can be exploited by attackers to escalate their privileges to root, potentially leading to a full system takeover. Dubbed Stack Clash , the vulnerability ( CVE-2017-1000364 ) has been discovered in the way memory was being allocated on the stack for user space binaries. Exploiting Stack Clash Bug to Gain Root Access The explanation is simple: Each program uses a special memory region called the stack, which is used to store short-term data. It expands and contracts automatically during the execution of any program, depending upon the needs of that program. According to researchers at Qualys, who discovered and reported this bug, a malicious program can attempt to use more memory space than available on the stack,...
Donald Trump appoints a CyberSecurity Advisor Whose Own Site is Damn Vulnerable

Donald Trump appoints a CyberSecurity Advisor Whose Own Site is Damn Vulnerable

Jan 13, 2017
Former New York City Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani has been appointed as a cyber security advisor for the President-elect Donald Trump, but it appears that he never actually checked the security defenses of his own company's website. Giuliani is going to head a new Cybersecurity Working group for the President-elect, and "will be sharing his expertise and insight as a trusted friend concerning private sector cyber security problems and emerging solutions developing in the private sector," the Trump's Transition Team announced Thursday. Trump administration has appointed Giuliani after citing his 16 years of experience "providing security solutions in the private sector," but the news met online criticism with many users on Twitter asking: 'What does the former New York mayor know about cyber security?' As the news broke, online users started scanning his website " www.giulianisecurity.com " and found that the site for Giuliani Sec...
Hacker Who Hacked Official Linux Kernel Website Arrested in Florida

Hacker Who Hacked Official Linux Kernel Website Arrested in Florida

Sep 03, 2016
Around five years after unknown hackers gained unauthorized access to multiple kernel.org servers used to maintain and distribute the Linux operating system kernel, police have arrested a South Florida computer programmer for carrying out the attack. Donald Ryan Austin , a 27-year-old programmer from of El Portal, Florida, was charged Thursday with hacking servers belonging to the Linux Kernel Organization ( kernel.org ) and the Linux Foundation in 2011, the Department of Justice announced on Thursday. The Linux Kernel Organization runs kernel.org servers for distributing the Linux operating system kernel, which is the heart of the operating system, whereas the Linux Foundation is a separate group that supports kernel.org. According to an indictment [ PDF ] unsealed by federal prosecutors on Monday, Austin managed to steal login credentials of one of the Linux Kernel Organization system administrators in 2011 and used them to install a hard-to-detect malware backdoor, dubbe...
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...
RaspBSD – FreeBSD distribution for Raspberry Pi

RaspBSD – FreeBSD distribution for Raspberry Pi

Aug 19, 2015
Raspberry Pi is gaining new heights by rapidly maturing as; after Microsoft made Windows 10 IoT core supporting the Raspberry Pi 2 , now a new version FreeBSD operating system is also deployable on Raspberry Pi devices, called RaspBSD . FreeBSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) is an open source Unix-like advanced computer operating system used to power modern servers, desktops and embedded systems. Though FreeBSD-CURRENT has supported Raspberry Pi since November 2012 and Raspberry Pi 2 since March 2015, RaspBSD will support the Pi models B and B+. As Raspberry Pi is a full fledged ARM system, FreeBSD/ARM is contributing to the list of the third-party operating system which support Raspberry Pi. This is not an official release as yet, the FreeBSD developers have made an image (Beta version) available for the users to play around with the Operating System and give their feedback and suggestions for the issues they encounter. RaspBSD Available For Download ...
Intrusion detected on two FreeBSD Project app dev servers

Intrusion detected on two FreeBSD Project app dev servers

Nov 19, 2012
The FreeBSD team has announced over the weekend that two machines within the FreeBSD.org cluster have been compromised and have been consequently pulled offline for analysis. Security team said on Saturday. " The affected machines were taken offline for analysis. Additionally, a large portion of the remaining infrastructure machines were also taken offline as a precaution, ". However it added that the intruder had sufficient access to modify third party packages, many of which are compiled and installed through FreeBSD's ports system. Audits have been performed to verify the infrastructure and source trees are clean and the suspect machines " are either being re installed  retired, or thoroughly audited before being brought back online ," the cluster administration team said . The FreeBSD Project was gearing up for the FreeBSD 9.1 release, however as it is unable to verify the integrity of the package set, that has been removed and will be rebuilt prior to th...
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