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Security researchers have discovered a new privilege-escalation vulnerability in Linux kernel that could allow a local attacker to execute code on the affected systems with elevated privileges. Discovered by Venustech ADLab (Active-Defense Lab) researchers, the Linux kernel vulnerability (CVE-2017-15265) is due to a use-after-free memory error in the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA) sequencer interface of the affected application. The Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA) provides audio and MIDI functionality to the Linux operating system, and also bundles a userspace driven library for application developers, enabling direct (kernel) interaction with sound devices through ALSA libraries. Successful exploitation of this vulnerability requires an attacker—with local access on the targeted system—to execute a maliciously crafted application on a targeted system, which allows the attacker to elevate his privilege to root on the targeted system, a Cisco advisory warned

A bug in Linux kernel that was discovered two years ago, but was not considered a security threat at that time, has now been recognised as a potential local privilege escalation flaw. Identified as CVE-2017-1000253, the bug was initially discovered by Google researcher Michael Davidson in April 2015. Since it was not recognised as a serious bug at that time, the patch for this kernel flaw was not backported to long-term Linux distributions in kernel 3.10.77. However, researchers at Qualys Research Labs has now found that this vulnerability could be exploited to escalate privileges and it affects all major Linux distributions, including Red Hat, Debian, and CentOS. The vulnerability left "all versions of CentOS 7 before 1708 (released on September 13, 2017), all versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 before 7.4 (released on August 1, 2017), and all versions of CentOS 6 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 are exploitable," Qualys said in an advisory published yesterday.

Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) is a strategic framework that helps organizations continuously assess and manage cyber risk. It breaks down the complex task of managing security threats into five distinct stages: Scoping, Discovery, Prioritization, Validation, and Mobilization. Each of these stages plays a crucial role in identifying, addressing, and mitigating vulnerabilities - before they can be exploited by attackers.  On paper, CTEM sounds great . But where the rubber meets the road – especially for CTEM neophytes - implementing CTEM can seem overwhelming. The process of putting CTEM principles into practice can look prohibitively complex at first. However, with the right tools and a clear understanding of each stage, CTEM can be an effective method for strengthening your organization's security posture.  That's why I've put together a step-by-step guide on which tools to use for which stage. Want to learn more? Read on… Stage 1: Scoping  When you're defin

Another dangerous vulnerability has been discovered in Linux kernel that dates back to 2009 and affects a large number of Linux distros, including Red Hat, Debian, Fedora, OpenSUSE, and Ubuntu. The latest Linux kernel flaw ( CVE-2017-2636 ), which existed in the Linux kernel for the past seven years, allows a local unprivileged user to gain root privileges on affected systems or cause a denial of service (system crash). Positive Technologies researcher Alexander Popov discovered a race condition issue in the N_HLDC Linux kernel driver – which is responsible for dealing with High-Level Data Link Control (HDLC) data – that leads to double-free vulnerability. " Double Free " is one of the most common memory corruption bug that occurs when the application releases same memory location twice by calling the free() function on the same allocated memory. An unauthenticated attacker may leverage this vulnerability to inject and execute arbitrary code in the security context of curren

Another privilege-escalation vulnerability has been discovered in Linux kernel that dates back to 2005 and affects major distro of the Linux operating system, including Redhat, Debian, OpenSUSE, and Ubuntu. Over a decade old Linux Kernel bug ( CVE-2017-6074 ) has been discovered by security researcher Andrey Konovalov in the DCCP (Datagram Congestion Control Protocol) implementation using Syzkaller , a kernel fuzzing tool released by Google. The vulnerability is a use-after-free flaw in the way the Linux kernel's "DCCP protocol implementation freed SKB (socket buffer) resources for a DCCP_PKT_REQUEST packet when the IPV6_RECVPKTINFO option is set on the socket." The DCCP double-free vulnerability could allow a local unprivileged user to alter the Linux kernel memory, enabling them to cause a denial of service ( system crash ) or escalate privileges to gain administrative access on a system. "An attacker can control what object that would be and overwrite

A 5-year-old serious privilege-escalation vulnerability has been discovered in Linux kernel that affects almost every distro of the Linux operating system, including Redhat, and Ubuntu. Over a month back, a nine-year-old privilege-escalation vulnerability, dubbed " Dirty COW ," was discovered in the Linux kernel that affected every distro of the open-source operating system, including Red Hat, Debian, and Ubuntu. Now, another Linux kernel vulnerability ( CVE-2016-8655 ) that dates back to 2011 disclosed today could allow an unprivileged local user to gain root privileges by exploiting a race condition in the af_packet implementation in the Linux kernel. Philip Pettersson, the researcher who discovered the flaw, was able to create an exploit to gain a root shell on an Ubuntu 16.04 LTS system (Linux Kernel 4.4) and also defeated SMEP/SMAP (Supervisor Mode Execution Prevention/Supervisor Mode Access Prevention) protection to gain kernel code execution abilities. In

A nine-year-old critical vulnerability has been discovered in virtually all versions of the Linux operating system and is actively being exploited in the wild. Dubbed " Dirty COW ," the Linux kernel security flaw (CVE-2016-5195) is a mere privilege-escalation vulnerability, but researchers are taking it extremely seriously due to many reasons. First, it's very easy to develop exploits that work reliably. Secondly, the Dirty COW flaw exists in a section of the Linux kernel, which is a part of virtually every distro of the open-source operating system, including RedHat, Debian, and Ubuntu, released for almost a decade. And most importantly, the researchers have discovered attack code that indicates the Dirty COW vulnerability is being actively exploited in the wild. Dirty COW potentially allows any installed malicious app to gain administrative (root-level) access to a device and completely hijack it within just 5 seconds. Earlier this week, Linus Torvalds admi

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

An estimated 80 percent of Android smartphones and tablets running Android 4.4 KitKat and higher are vulnerable to a recently disclosed Linux kernel flaw that allows hackers to terminate connections, spy on unencrypted traffic or inject malware into the parties' communications. Even the latest Android Nougat Preview is considered to be vulnerable. The security flaw was first appeared in the implementation of the TCP protocol in all Linux systems deployed since 2012 (version 3.6 and above of the Linux OS kernel) and the Linux Foundation has already patched the Linux kernel on July 11, 2016. However, the vulnerability ( CVE-2016-5696 ) is now affecting a large portion of the Android ecosystem. According to a blog post published Monday by mobile security firm Lookout, the Linux flaw is present in Android version 4.4 KitKat and all future releases, including the latest developer preview of Android Nougat . Around 1.4 BILLLLLION Android Devices Affected This means that 80%

How to Hack an Android device? It is possibly one of the most frequently asked questions on the Internet. Although it's not pretty simple to hack Android devices and gadgets, sometimes you just get lucky to find a backdoor access. Thanks to Allwinner, a Chinese ARM system-on-a-chip maker, which has recently been caught shipping a version of Linux Kernel with an incredibly simple and easy-to-use built-in backdoor. Chinese fabless semiconductor company Allwinner is a leading supplier of application processors that are used in many low-cost Android tablets, ARM-based PCs, set-top boxes, and other electronic devices worldwide. Simple Backdoor Exploit to Hack Android Devices All you need to do to gain root access of an affected Android device is… Send the text " rootmydevice " to any undocumented debugging process. The local privileges escalation  backdoor code for debugging ARM-powered Android devices managed to make its way in shipped firmware after fir

Information security and privacy are consistently hot topics after Edward Snowden revelations of NSA's global surveillance that brought the world's attention towards data protection and encryption as never before. Moreover, just days after Windows 10 's successful launch last summer, we saw various default settings in the Microsoft's newest OS that compromise users' privacy , making a large number of geeks, as well as regular users, migrate to Linux. However, the problem is that majority of users are not friendly to the Linux environment. They don't know how to configure their machine with right privacy and security settings, which makes them still open to hacking and surveillance. However, this gaping hole can be filled with a  Debian-based  Security-focused Linux operating system called Subgraph OS: A key solution to your Privacy Fear. Subgraph OS is a feather weighted Linux flavor that aims to combat hacking attacks easier, even on fai

Do You Know:  China has planned to eliminate all foreign Technologies and Services by 2020, just like Google and Facebook . And it seems China in some years would be an entirely independent IT economy; building homegrown Mobile and computer devices, Operating Systems, Applications, Browsers and almost everything existing in the IT ecosystem. Well, China was not at all happy when Microsoft finally announced the end of official support for Windows XP. At the time, Windows holded 91% of total market share, compared to just for Mac OS X and just 1% for Linux. However, China wasn't interested to pay either for extended support for Windows XP or for switching to Windows 8. So, they decided to develop their own Operating System. Yes, China has developed a Desktop Operating System named " NeoKylin " ( and ' Kylin ' in Chinese ), tagged as a substitute to Windows XP by Quartz , who got an opportunity to have a hands-on experience of its "community version" OS. NeoKylin

Can you name which Operating System is most Secure ? ...Windows, Mac, Linux or any particular Linux Distribution? Yes, we get that! It's not an easy thing to pick. Besides Windows, Even the so-called ultra-secure Linux Distros were found to be vulnerable to various critical flaws in past years. Because, almost all Linux Distros use the same Kernel, and the most number of cyber attacks target the Kernel of an operating system. So, It doesn't matter which Linux distribution you use. The kernel is the core part an operating system, which handles all the main activities and enforces the security mechanisms to the entire operating system. Making an Operating System secure requires that vulnerabilities shall not exist in the Kernel, which is the communicating interface between the hardware and the user.  To overcome the above situation, Security Researchers, Mathematicians and Aviation gurus from Boeing and Rockwell Collins joined a team of dedicated NIC

First announced over five years ago, ex-Google engineer Kent Overstreet is pleasured in announcing the general availability of a new open-source file-system for Linux, called the Bcache File System (or Bcachefs ). Bcachefs is a Linux kernel block layer cache that aims at offering a speedier and more advanced way of storing data on servers. Bcachefs promises to provide the same performance and reliability as the consecrated EXT4 and XFS file systems while having features of the ZFS and Btrfs file systems . Features that Bcachefs Supports Bcachefs supports all the features of a modern file-system, including: Checksumming to ensure data integrity Compression to save space Caching for quick response Copy-on-Write (COW) that offers the ability for a single file to be accessed by multiple parties at once What's coming next for Bcachefs It seems that some of the features in Bcachefs are limited or missing, which includes: Snapshots Erasure codi

A simple but shockingly dangerous vulnerability has been uncovered in the NetUSB component, putting Millions of modern routers and other embedded devices across the globe at risk of being compromised by hackers. The security vulnerability, assigned CVE-2015-3036 , is a remotely exploitable kernel stack buffer overflow flaw resides in Taiwan-based KCodes NetUSB . NetUSB is a Linux kernel module that allows for users to flash drives, plug printers and other USB-connected devices into their routers so that they can be accessed over the local network. NetUSB component is integrated into modern routers sold by some major manufacturers including D-Link, Netgear, TP-Link, ZyXEL and TrendNet. The security flaw, reported by Stefan Viehbock of Austria-based SEC Consult Vulnerability Lab, can be triggered when a client sends the computer name to the server deployed on the networking device (TCP port 20005) in order to establish a connection. However, if a connecting comp

A 20 year old critical subtle integer overflow vulnerability has been discovered in Lempel-Ziv-Oberhumer (LZO), an extremely efficient data compression algorithm that focuses on decompression speed, which is almost five times faster than zlib and bzip compression algorithms. Lempel-Ziv-Oberhumer (LZO) was developed in 1994 by Markus Oberhumer and currently it is one of the most popular and widespread compression algorithm used in the Linux kernel , some Samsung Android mobile devices, other embedded devices and several open-source libraries including OpenVPN, MPlayer2, Libav, FFmpeg. 20 YEAR OLD VULNERABILITY IN LZO ALGORITHM Don A. Bailey, founder and CEO of Lab Mouse Security, who disclosed the technical details of the buffer overrun vulnerability in LZO/LZ4 algorithm, explains that if an attacker carefully craft a piece of compressed data that would run malicious code when the software attempted to decompress it. According to advisory, if buffers of 16MB or more

Multiple flaws have been identified in Linux Kernel and related software could allow hackers to hack your Linux machines, shared hosting and websites hosted on them. PRIVILEGE ESCALATION VULNERABILITY IN LINUX KERNEL A privilege escalation vulnerability has been identified in the widely used Linux kernel that could allow an attackers to take the control of users' system. On Thursday, the most popular distributor of open source Linux OS, Debian warned about this vulnerability (CVE-2014-3153) in a security update, along with some other vulnerabilities in the Linux kernel that may lead to a denial of service attack. The most critical one is the flaw (CVE-2014-3153) discovered by Pinkie Pie which resides in the futex subsystem call of Linux Kernel 2.6.32.62/3.2.59/3.4.91/3.10.41/3.12.21/3.14.5 versions , leaving a queued kernel waiter on the stack, which can be exploited to potentially execute arbitrary code with kernel mode privileges. " Pinkie Pie discovered an

There is a good news for all Security researchers, Penetration testers and Hackers. The developers of one of the most advance open source operating system for penetration testing, ' KALI Linux ' have announced yesterday the release of its latest version of Kali Linux 1.0.7 with some interesting features. Kali Linux is an open source Debian-based distribution for penetration testing and forensics that is maintained and funded by Offensive Security, a provider of world-class information security training and penetration testing services. In the beginning of this year, Offensive Security released Kali Linux 1.0.6 with Kernel version 3.12, and also added the Self Destruct feature that allows Kali users to encrypt the full hard disk to make the data inaccessible in an emergency case by entering a secret password at boot time. This latest Kali Linux 1.0.7 version added some more features to the last version, along with many new penetration testing and hacking too