Kerberos | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a case of "forced authentication" that could be exploited to leak a Windows user's NT LAN Manager (NTLM) tokens by tricking a victim into opening a specially crafted Microsoft Access file. The attack takes advantage of a legitimate feature in the database management system solution that allows users to  link to external data sources , such as a remote SQL Server table. "This feature can be abused by attackers to automatically leak the Windows user's NTLM tokens to any attacker-controlled server, via any TCP port, such as port 80," Check Point security researcher Haifei Li  said . "The attack can be launched as long as the victim opens an .accdb or .mdb file. In fact, any more-common Office file type (such as a .rtf ) can work as well." NTLM, an authentication protocol introduced by Microsoft in 1993, is a challenge-response protocol that's used to authenticate users during sign-in. Over the years,

Microsoft has revised the severity of a security vulnerability it originally  patched in September 2022 , upgrading it to "Critical" after it emerged that it could be exploited to achieve remote code execution. Tracked as  CVE-2022-37958  (CVSS score: 8.1), the flaw was previously described as an  information disclosure vulnerability  in SPNEGO Extended Negotiation ( NEGOEX ) Security Mechanism. SPNEGO, short for Simple and Protected GSSAPI Negotiation Mechanism (SPNEGO), is a scheme that allows a client and remote server to arrive at a consensus on the choice of the protocol to be used (e.g., Kerberos or NTLM) for authentication. But a  further analysis  of the flaw by IBM Security X-Force researcher Valentina Palmiotti found that it could allow remote execution of arbitrary code, prompting Microsoft to reclassify its severity. "This vulnerability is a pre-authentication remote code execution vulnerability impacting a wide range of protocols," IBM  said  this

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

Microsoft's Active Directory is  said to be used by 95%  of Fortune 500. As a result, it is a prime target for attackers as they look to gain access to credentials in the organization, as compromised credentials provide one of the easiest ways for hackers to access your data. A key authentication technology that underpins Microsoft Active Directory is Kerberos. Unfortunately, hackers use many different attacks against Active Directory's implementation of the Kerberos authentication protocol. One of those is AS-REP Roasting. So what is AS-REP Roasting, and how can businesses protect themselves? What is Active Directory Kerberos? Kerberos was originally developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and centered around using tickets to establish trust. Microsoft's implementation of Kerberos found in Active Directory is based on Kerberos Network Authentication Service (V5) as defined in  RFC 4120 . However, Microsoft has added to and enhanced Kerberos with it

Cybersecurity researchers on Wednesday disclosed a new bypass vulnerability (CVE-2021-23008) in the Kerberos Key Distribution Center (KDC) security feature impacting F5 Big-IP application delivery services. "The KDC Spoofing vulnerability allows an attacker to bypass the Kerberos authentication to Big-IP Access Policy Manager (APM), bypass security policies and gain unfettered access to sensitive workloads," Silverfort researchers Yaron Kassner and Rotem Zach said in a report. "In some cases this can be used to bypass authentication to the Big-IP admin console as well." Coinciding with the public disclosure, F5 Networks has released patches to address the weakness (CVE-2021-23008, CVSS score 8.1), with fixes introduced in BIG-IP APM versions 12.1.6, 13.1.4, 14.1.4, and 15.1.3. A similar patch for version 16.x is expected at a future date. "We recommend customers running 16.x check the security advisory to assess their exposure and get details on mitigati