NTLM | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Microsoft closed out its Patch Tuesday updates for 2024 with fixes for a total of 72 security flaws spanning its software portfolio, including one that it said has been exploited in the wild. Of the 72 flaws, 17 are rated Critical, 54 are rated Important, and one is rated Moderate in severity. Thirty-one of the vulnerabilities are remote code execution flaws, and 27 of them allow for the elevation of privileges. This is in addition to 13 vulnerabilities the company has addressed in its Chromium-based Edge browser since the release of last month's security update . In total, Microsoft has resolved as many as 1,088 vulnerabilities in 2024 alone, per Fortra. The vulnerability that Microsoft has acknowledged as having been actively exploited is CVE-2024-49138 (CVSS score: 7.8), a privilege escalation flaw in the Windows Common Log File System (CLFS) Driver. "An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could gain SYSTEM privileges," the company said in an...

Veeam has released security updates to address a critical flaw impacting Service Provider Console (VSPC) that could pave the way for remote code execution on susceptible instances. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-42448, carries a CVSS score of 9.9 out of a maximum of 10.0. The company noted that the bug was identified during internal testing. "From the VSPC management agent machine, under the condition that the management agent is authorized on the server, it is possible to perform Remote Code Execution (RCE) on the VSPC server machine," Veeam said in an advisory. Another defect patched by Veeam relates to a vulnerability (CVE-2024-42449, CVSS score: 7.1) that could be abused to leak an NTLM hash of the VSPC server service account and delete files on the VSPC server machine. Both the identified vulnerabilities affect Veeam Service Provider Console 8.1.0.21377 and all earlier versions of 7 and 8 builds. They have been addressed in version 8.1.0.21999. Veeam furt...

Vulnerability Management (VM) has long been a cornerstone of organizational cybersecurity. Nearly as old as the discipline of cybersecurity itself, it aims to help organizations identify and address potential security issues before they become serious problems. Yet, in recent years, the limitations of this approach have become increasingly evident.  At its core, Vulnerability Management processes remain essential for identifying and addressing weaknesses. But as time marches on and attack avenues evolve, this approach is beginning to show its age. In a recent report, How to Grow Vulnerability Management into Exposure Management (Gartner, How to Grow Vulnerability Management Into Exposure Management, 8 November 2024, Mitchell Schneider Et Al.), we believe Gartner® addresses this point precisely and demonstrates how organizations can – and must – shift from a vulnerability-centric strategy to a broader Exposure Management (EM) framework. We feel it's more than a worthwhile read an...

A newly patched security flaw impacting Windows NT LAN Manager (NTLM) was exploited as a zero-day by a suspected Russia-linked actor as part of cyber attacks targeting Ukraine. The vulnerability in question, CVE-2024-43451 (CVSS score: 6.5), refers to an NTLM hash disclosure spoofing vulnerability that could be exploited to steal a user's NTLMv2 hash. It was patched by Microsoft earlier this week. "Minimal interaction with a malicious file by a user such as selecting (single-click), inspecting (right-click), or performing an action other than opening or executing could trigger this vulnerability," Microsoft revealed in its advisory. Israeli cybersecurity company ClearSky, which discovered the zero-day exploitation of the flaw in June 2024, said it's been abused as part of an attack chain that delivers the open-source Spark RAT malware. "The vulnerability activates URL files, leading to malicious activity," the company said, adding the malicious file...

Microsoft on Wednesday outlined its plans to deprecate Visual Basic Script (VBScript) in the second half of 2024 in favor of more advanced alternatives such as JavaScript and PowerShell. "Technology has advanced over the years, giving rise to more powerful and versatile scripting languages such as JavaScript and PowerShell," Microsoft Program Manager Naveen Shankar  said . "These languages offer broader capabilities and are better suited for modern web development and automation tasks." The tech giant originally  announced  its plans to gradually sunset VBScript in October 2023. The scripting language, also called Visual Basic Scripting Edition, was first introduced by Microsoft in 1996 as a Windows system component, offering users the ability to automate tasks and develop interactive web pages using Internet Explorer and Edge (in  Internet Explorer mode ). The announced deprecation plan consists of three phases, with the first phase kicking off in the second h...

A now-patched security flaw in Microsoft Outlook could be exploited by threat actors to access NT LAN Manager (NTLM) v2 hashed passwords when opening a specially crafted file. The issue, tracked as CVE-2023-35636 (CVSS score: 6.5), was addressed by the tech giant as part of its  Patch Tuesday updates  for December 2023. "In an email attack scenario, an attacker could exploit the vulnerability by sending the specially crafted file to the user and convincing the user to open the file," Microsoft  said  in an advisory released last month. "In a web-based attack scenario, an attacker could host a website (or leverage a compromised website that accepts or hosts user-provided content) containing a specially crafted file designed to exploit the vulnerability." Put differently, the adversary would have to convince users to click a link, either embedded in a phishing email or sent via an instant message, and then deceive them into opening the file in question. CVE-202...