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Microsoft Releases Patches for 3 Remaining NSA Windows Exploits

Microsoft Releases Patches for 3 Remaining NSA Windows Exploits

Jun 14, 2017
Did you know… last month's widespread WannaCry ransomware attack forced Microsoft to release security updates against EternalBlue SMB exploit for unsupported versions of Windows, but the company left other three Windows zero-day exploits unpatched? For those unaware, EternalBlue is a Windows SMB flaw that was leaked by the Shadow Brokers in April and then abused by the WannaCry ransomware to infect nearly 300,000 computers in more than 150 countries within just 72 hours on 12th of May. Shortly after WannaCry outbreak, we reported that three unpatched Windows exploits , codenamed " EsteemAudit, " " ExplodingCan ," and " EnglishmanDentist ," were also being exploited by individuals and state-sponsored hackers in the wild. Specially EsteemAudit , one of the dangerous Windows hacking tool that targets remote desktop protocol (RDP) service on Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP machines, while ExplodingCan exploits bugs in IIS 6.0 and E
First-Ever Data Stealing Malware Found Using Intel AMT Tool to Bypass Firewall

First-Ever Data Stealing Malware Found Using Intel AMT Tool to Bypass Firewall

Jun 09, 2017
It's not hard for a well-funded state-sponsored hacking group to break into corporate networks and compromise systems with malware, but what's challenging for them is to keep that backdoor and its communication undetectable from a firewall and other network monitoring applications. However, a cyber-espionage group known as " Platinum ," that is actively targeting governmental organisations, defense institutes, and telecommunication providers since at least 2009, has found a way to hide its malicious activities from host-based protection mechanisms. Microsoft has recently discovered that the cyber-espionage group is now leveraging Intel's Active Management Technology (AMT) Serial-over-LAN (SOL) channel as a file-transfer tool to steal data from the targeted computers without detection. Intel-based chip sets come with an embedded technology, called AMT, which is designed to allow IT administrators to remotely manage and repair PCs, workstations, and serve
Making Sense of Operational Technology Attacks: The Past, Present, and Future

Making Sense of Operational Technology Attacks: The Past, Present, and Future

Mar 21, 2024Operational Technology / SCADA Security
When you read reports about cyber-attacks affecting operational technology (OT), it's easy to get caught up in the hype and assume every single one is sophisticated. But are OT environments all over the world really besieged by a constant barrage of complex cyber-attacks? Answering that would require breaking down the different types of OT cyber-attacks and then looking back on all the historical attacks to see how those types compare.  The Types of OT Cyber-Attacks Over the past few decades, there has been a growing awareness of the need for improved cybersecurity practices in IT's lesser-known counterpart, OT. In fact, the lines of what constitutes a cyber-attack on OT have never been well defined, and if anything, they have further blurred over time. Therefore, we'd like to begin this post with a discussion around the ways in which cyber-attacks can either target or just simply impact OT, and why it might be important for us to make the distinction going forward. Figure 1 The Pu
Kaspersky Accuses Microsoft of Unfairly Disabling its Antivirus in Windows 10

Kaspersky Accuses Microsoft of Unfairly Disabling its Antivirus in Windows 10

Jun 07, 2017
Russian antivirus vendor Kaspersky Lab is so upset with US software giant Microsoft that the security firm has filed more antitrust complaints against the company. The antivirus firm initially filed a lawsuit late last year against Microsoft with Russian Federal Anti-monopoly Service (FAS) over alleged abuse of Microsoft's dominant position in the desktop market to push its own antivirus software with Windows 10 and unfair competition in the market. Microsoft ships Windows 10 with its own security software Windows Defender, which comes enabled it by default with the operating system. While Microsoft has made some changes in Windows Defender since the initial complaint, Kaspersky Lab is not satisfied with the changes, filing more antitrust complaints against the software giant, this time with the European Commission and the German Federal Cartel Office. Kaspersky Accuses Microsoft of Unfair Competitive Practices The antivirus firm told European antitrust regulators that Mi
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Newly Found Malware Uses 7 NSA Hacking Tools, Where WannaCry Uses 2

Newly Found Malware Uses 7 NSA Hacking Tools, Where WannaCry Uses 2

May 22, 2017
A security researcher has identified a new strain of malware that also spreads itself by exploiting flaws in Windows SMB file sharing protocol, but unlike the WannaCry Ransomware that uses only two leaked NSA hacking tools , it exploits all the seven. Last week, we warned you about multiple hacking groups exploiting leaked NSA hacking tools, but almost all of them were making use of only two tools: EternalBlue and DoublePulsar. Now, Miroslav Stampar, a security researcher who created famous 'sqlmap' tool and now a member of the Croatian Government CERT, has discovered a new network worm, dubbed EternalRocks , which is more dangerous than WannaCry and has no kill-switch in it. Unlike WannaCry, EternalRocks seems to be designed to function secretly in order to ensure that it remains undetectable on the affected system. However, Stampar learned of EternalRocks after it infected his SMB honeypot . The NSA exploits used by EternalRocks, which Stampar called " Do
Protect Against WannaCry: Microsoft Issues Patch for Unsupported Windows (XP, Vista, 8,...)

Protect Against WannaCry: Microsoft Issues Patch for Unsupported Windows (XP, Vista, 8,...)

May 13, 2017
Update —  After reading this article, if you want to know, what has happened so far in past 4 days and how to protect your computers from WannaCry, read our latest article " WannaCry Ransomware: Everything You Need To Know Immediately . "  In the wake of the largest ransomware attack in the history that had already infected over 114,000 Windows systems worldwide since last 24 hours, Microsoft just took an unusual step to protect its customers with out-of-date computers. Also Read —   Google Researcher Finds Link Between WannaCry Attacks and North Korea . Microsoft has just released an emergency security patch update for all its unsupported version of Windows, including Windows XP, Vista, Windows 8, Server 2003 and 2008 Editions. So, if your organization, for some reason, is still running on Windows XP or Vista, you are strongly advised to download and APPLY PATCH NOW ! WannaCrypt , or also known as WannaCry, is a new ransomware that wreaked havoc across the wo
Microsoft Issues Emergency Patch For Critical RCE in Windows Malware Scanner

Microsoft Issues Emergency Patch For Critical RCE in Windows Malware Scanner

May 09, 2017
Microsoft's own antivirus software made Windows 7, 8.1, RT and 10 computers, as well as Windows Server 2016 more vulnerable. Microsoft has just released an out-of-band security update to patch the crazy bad bug discovered by a pair of Google Project Zero researchers over the weekend. Security researchers Tavis Ormandy announced on Twitter during the weekend that he and another Project Zero researcher Natalie Silvanovich discovered "the worst Windows remote code [execution vulnerability] in recent memory." Natalie Silvanovich also published a  proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit code that fits in a single tweet. The reported RCE vulnerability , according to the duo, could work against default installations with "wormable" ability – capability to replicate itself on an infected computer and then spread to other PCs automatically. According to an advisory released by Microsoft, the remotely exploitable security flaw (CVE-2017-0290) exists in Microsoft
Not Just Criminals, But Governments Were Also Using MS Word 0-Day Exploit

Not Just Criminals, But Governments Were Also Using MS Word 0-Day Exploit

Apr 13, 2017
Recently we reported about a critical code execution vulnerability in Microsoft Word that was being exploited in the wild by cyber criminal groups to distribute malware like Dridex banking trojans and Latentbot. Now, it turns out that the same previously undisclosed vulnerability in Word (CVE-2017-0199) was also actively being exploited by the government-sponsored hackers to spy on Russian targets since at least this January. The news comes after security firm FireEye, that independently discovered this flaw last month, published a blog post , revealing that FinSpy spyware was installed as early as January using the same vulnerability in Word that was patched on Tuesday by Microsoft. For those unaware, the vulnerability (CVE-2017-0199) is a code execution flaw in Word that could allow an attacker to take over a fully patched and up to date computer when the victim opens a Word document containing a booby-trapped OLE2link object, which downloads a malicious HTML app from a
Microsoft Issues Patches for Actively Exploited Critical Vulnerabilities

Microsoft Issues Patches for Actively Exploited Critical Vulnerabilities

Apr 12, 2017
Besides a previously undisclosed code-execution flaw in Microsoft Word, the tech giant patches two more zero-day vulnerabilities that attackers had been exploiting in the wild for months, as part of this month's Patch Tuesday . In total, Microsoft patches 45 unique vulnerabilities in its nine products, including three previously undisclosed vulnerabilities under active attack. The first vulnerability ( CVE-2017-0199 ) under attack is a remote-code execution flaw that could allow an attacker to remotely take over a fully patched and up to date computer when the victim opens a Word document containing a booby-trapped OLE2link object. The attack can bypass most exploit mitigations developed by Microsoft, and according to Ryan Hanson of security firm Optiv, in some cases, exploits can execute malicious code even when Protected View is enabled. As The Hacker News reported Monday, this code-execution flaw in Microsoft Word was being exploited by hackers to spread a version
Unpatched Microsoft Word Flaw is Being Used to Spread Dridex Banking Trojan

Unpatched Microsoft Word Flaw is Being Used to Spread Dridex Banking Trojan

Apr 11, 2017
If you are a regular reader of The Hacker News, you might be aware of an ongoing cyber attack — detected in the wild by McAfee and FireEye — that silently installs malware on fully-patched computers by exploiting an unpatched Microsoft Word vulnerability in all current versions of Microsoft Office. Now, according to security firm Proofpoint, the operators of the Dridex malware started exploiting the unpatched Microsoft Word vulnerability to spread a version of their infamous Dridex banking trojan . Dridex is currently one of the most dangerous banking trojans on the Internet that exhibits the typical behavior of monitoring a victim's traffic to bank sites by infiltrating PCs and stealing victim's online banking credentials and financial data. The Dridex actors usually relied on macro-laden Word files to distribute the malware through spam messages or emails. However, this is the first time when researchers found the Dridex operators using an unpatched zero-day flaw
Android Beats Windows to Become World's Most Popular Operating System

Android Beats Windows to Become World's Most Popular Operating System

Apr 03, 2017
It's an impressive milestone for Google — For the first time in decades, Android has been crowned as the world's most popular operating system in terms of Internet usage, knocking Microsoft Windows off the top spot. According to a new report from web traffic analytics firm StatCounter, Google's Android is the most popular operating system worldwide in terms of total internet usage across desktop, laptop, tablet, and mobile combined. Looking at overall internet usage, Android represented 37.93 percent of the global OS Internet usage market share in March, while Windows accounted for 37.91 percent. Although Windows is still not far behind, Android taking the lead is being described by StatCounter CEO Aodhan Cullen as a "milestone in technology history." This achievement is due to the fact that mobile devices are used to connect to the Internet far more frequently than desktops and laptops, and people are spending more time on smartphones surfing the Inter
Microsoft is Shutting Down CodePlex, Asks Devs To Move To GitHub

Microsoft is Shutting Down CodePlex, Asks Devs To Move To GitHub

Apr 03, 2017
Microsoft has announced to shut down CodePlex -- its website for hosting repositories of open-source software projects -- on December 15, 2017. Launched in 2006, CodePlex was one of the Microsoft's biggest steps towards the world of open source community -- where any programmer, anywhere can share the code for their software or download and tweak the code to their liking. However, Microsoft says that the service has dramatically fallen in usage and that fewer than 350 projects seeing a source code commit over the last 30 days, pointing to GitHub as the "de-facto place for open source sharing." GitHub – 'Facebook for Programmers' In a blog post published Friday, Microsoft Corporate VP Brian Harry wrote that the shutdown of CodePlex is because the open source community has almost entirely moved over to GitHub, which provides similar functionality for sharing code that people can collaborate on. "Over the years, we have seen a lot of amazing opti
Microsoft Started Blocking Windows 7/8.1 Updates For PCs Running New Processors

Microsoft Started Blocking Windows 7/8.1 Updates For PCs Running New Processors

Mar 20, 2017
You might have heard the latest news about Microsoft blocking new security patches and updates for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 users running the latest processors from Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, and others. Don't panic, this new policy doesn't mean that all Windows 7 and 8.1 users will not be able to receive latest updates in general because Microsoft has promised to support Windows 7 until 2020 , and Windows 8.1 until 2023. But those who have upgraded their machines running older versions of Windows to the latest processors, or manually downgraded their new laptops to run Windows 7/8.1 would be out of luck. A recently published Microsoft Knowledge Base article suggests that if you are running the older version of operating systems on your computers that feature new processors, including Intel's 7th generation Core i3, i5 and i7 ("Kaby Lake"), AMD Ryzen ("Bristol Ridge") and Qualcomm 8996 chips or later, the security updates will not install. Inste
Microsoft Finally Releases Security Patches For Publicly-Disclosed Critical Flaws

Microsoft Finally Releases Security Patches For Publicly-Disclosed Critical Flaws

Mar 15, 2017
After last month's postponement, Microsoft's Patch Tuesday is back with a massive release of fixes that includes patches for security vulnerabilities in Windows and associated software disclosed and exploited since January's patch release. Meanwhile, Adobe has also pushed out security updates for its products, releasing patches for at least seven security vulnerabilities in its Flash Player software. Microsoft patched a total of 140 separate security vulnerabilities across 18 security bulletins, nine of them critical as they allow remote code execution on the affected computer. Microsoft Finally Patches Publicly Disclosed Windows Flaws Among the "critical" security updates include a flaw in the SMB (server message block) network file sharing protocol, which had publicly disclosed exploit code since last month. The original patch released last year for this flaw was incomplete. The flaw is a memory corruption issue that could allow remote code execu
Scientists Store an Operating System, a Movie and a Computer Virus on DNA

Scientists Store an Operating System, a Movie and a Computer Virus on DNA

Mar 04, 2017
Do you know — 1 Gram of DNA Can Store 1,000,000,000 Terabyte of Data for 1000+ Years. Just last year, Microsoft purchased 10 Million strands of synthetic DNA from San Francisco DNA synthesis startup called Twist Bioscience and collaborated with researchers from the University of Washington to focus on using DNA as a data storage medium. However, in the latest experiments, a pair of researchers from Columbia University and the New York Genome Center (NYGC) have come up with a new technique to store massive amounts of data on DNA, and the results are marvelous. The duo successfully stored around 2mb in data, encoding a total number of six files, which include: A full computer operating system An 1895 French movie "Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat" A $50 Amazon gift card A computer virus A Pioneer plaque A 1948 study by information theorist Claude Shannon The new research, which comes courtesy of Yaniv Erlich and Dina Zielinski, has been published in the jou
Google Increases Bug Bounty Payouts by 50% and Microsoft Just Doubles It!

Google Increases Bug Bounty Payouts by 50% and Microsoft Just Doubles It!

Mar 03, 2017
Well, there's some good news for hackers and bug bounty hunters! Both tech giants Google and Microsoft have raised the value of the payouts they offer security researchers, white hat hackers and bug hunters who find high severity flaws in their products. While Microsoft has just doubled its top reward from $15,000 to $30,000, Google has raised its high reward from $20,000 to $31,337, which is a 50 percent rise plus a bonus $1,337 or 'leet' award. In past few years, every major company, from Apple to P*rnHub and Netgear , had started Bug Bounty Programs to encourage hackers and security researchers to find and responsibly report bugs in their services and get rewarded. But since more and more bug hunters participating in bug bounty programs at every big tech company, common and easy-to-spot bugs are hardly left now, and if any, they hardly make any severe impact. Sophisticated and remotely exploitable vulnerabilities are a thing now, which takes more time and
Google Does It Again: Discloses Unpatched Microsoft Edge and IE Vulnerability

Google Does It Again: Discloses Unpatched Microsoft Edge and IE Vulnerability

Feb 25, 2017
This month has yet been kind of interesting for cyber security researchers, with Google successfully cracked SHA1 and the discovery of Cloudbleed bug in Cloudflare that caused the leakage of sensitive information across sites hosted behind Cloudflare. Besides this, Google last week disclosed an unpatched vulnerability in Windows Graphics Device Interface (GDI) library, which affects Microsoft's Windows operating systems ranging from Windows Vista Service Pack 2 to the latest Windows 10. While the Windows vulnerability has yet to be patched by the company, Google today released the details of another unpatched Windows security flaw in its browser, as Microsoft did not act within its 90-day disclosure deadline. The vulnerability (CVE-2017-0037), discovered and disclosed by Google Project Zero team's researcher Ivan Fratric, is a so-called " type confusion flaw " in a module in Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer that potentially leads to arbitrary code exec
Microsoft releases update for Flash Player, but leaves two disclosed Flaws Unpatched

Microsoft releases update for Flash Player, but leaves two disclosed Flaws Unpatched

Feb 22, 2017
Microsoft on Tuesday released security update (KB 4010250) to patch flaws in Adobe Flash Player for its customers using Internet Explorer on Windows 8.1 and later, as well as Edge for Windows 10, but two already disclosed flaws remain unpatched. Just last week, Microsoft announced that its February patches would be delayed until March due to a last minute issue, a move that led to Google publishing details of an unpatched Windows bug . However, the software giant emailed a handful of big business to alert them to the incoming patches on Monday, advising them to update their systems as soon as possible. The security patches are now available to all Windows customers over Windows Update, and " No other security updates are scheduled for release until the next scheduled monthly update release on March 14, 2017 ," Microsoft says. Bulletin MS17-005 for Adobe Flash Player addresses remote code execution (RCE) vulnerabilities for some currently supported Windows systems.
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