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NTP DoS Exploit Released — Update Your Servers to Patch 10 Flaws

NTP DoS Exploit Released — Update Your Servers to Patch 10 Flaws

Nov 23, 2016
A proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit for a critical vulnerability in the Network Time Protocol daemon (ntpd) has been publically released that could allow anyone to crash a server with just a single maliciously crafted packet. The vulnerability has been patched by the Network Time Foundation with the release of NTP 4.2.8p9, which includes a total of 40 security patches, bug fixes, and improvements. The NTP daemon is used in almost every device that needs to synchronize time on computer clocks. NTP got the most attention in late 2014 and 2015 when hackers used it to launch highly amplified DDoS attacks against services. The flaw which affects NTP.org's nptd versions prior to 4.2.8p9, but not including ntp-4.3.94, has been discovered by security researcher Magnus Stubman, who privately disclosed it to the Network Time Foundation on June 24. A patch for the vulnerability was developed and sent to Stubman on 29th September and just two days later, the researcher acknowledged t
Warning! Your iPhone Can Get Hacked Just by Opening a JPEG Image, PDF or Font File

Warning! Your iPhone Can Get Hacked Just by Opening a JPEG Image, PDF or Font File

Oct 25, 2016
What's worse than knowing that innocent looking JPEGs, PDFs and font files can hijack your iPhone, iPad, and iPod. Yes, attackers can take over your vulnerable Apple's iOS device remotely – all they have to do is trick you to view a maliciously-crafted JPEG graphic or PDF file through a website or an email, which could allow them to execute malicious code on your system. That's a terrible flaw (CVE-2016-4673), but the good news is that Apple has released the latest version of its mobile operating system, iOS 10.1 , for iPhones and iPads to address this remote-code execution flaw, alongside an array of bug fixes. And now that the company has rolled out a security patch, some hackers would surely find vulnerable Apple devices to exploit the vulnerability and take full control of them. So, users running older versions of iOS are advised to update their mobile devices to iOS 10.1 as soon as possible. Besides this remote code execution flaw, the newest iOS 10.1 incl
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
High-Severity OpenSSL Vulnerability allows Hackers to Decrypt HTTPS Traffic

High-Severity OpenSSL Vulnerability allows Hackers to Decrypt HTTPS Traffic

May 05, 2016
OpenSSL has released a series of patches against six vulnerabilities, including a pair of high-severity flaws that could allow attackers to execute malicious code on a web server as well as decrypt HTTPS traffic . OpenSSL is an open-source cryptographic library that is the most widely being used by a significant portion of the Internet services; to cryptographically protect their sensitive Web and e-mail traffic using the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) or Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol. One of the high-severity flaws, CVE-2016-2107 , allows a man-in-the-middle attacker to initiate a " Padding Oracle Attack " that can decrypt HTTPS traffic if the connection uses AES-CBC cipher and the server supports AES-NI. A Padding Oracle flaw weakens the encryption protection by allowing attackers to repeatedly request plaintext data about an encrypted payload content. The Padding Oracle flaw ( exploit code ) was discovered by Juraj Somorovsky using his own developed tool c
cyber security

Automated remediation solutions are crucial for security

websiteWing SecurityShadow IT / SaaS Security
Especially when it comes to securing employees' SaaS usage, don't settle for a longer to-do list. Auto-remediation is key to achieving SaaS security.
Emergency Patch released for Latest Flash Zero-Day Vulnerability

Emergency Patch released for Latest Flash Zero-Day Vulnerability

Oct 17, 2015
Two days ago, The Hacker News (THN) reported about the Zero-day vulnerability in the freshly patched Adobe Flash Player . The vulnerability was exploited in the wild by a well-known group of Russian hackers, named " Pawn Storm ," to target several foreign affairs ministries worldwide. The zero-day flaw allowed hackers to have complete control of the users' machine, potentially putting all the Flash Player users at a potentially high risk. Since then, there was no patch available to make flawed utility safe. However, Adobe has now patched the zero-day vulnerability, along with some critical vulnerabilities whose details are yet to be disclosed. Yesterday, the company published a post on their official security bulletin ( APSB15-27 ) detailing the risks associated with the zero-day and how a user can get rid of them. The critical vulnerabilities are assigned following CVE numbers: CVE-2015-7645 CVE-2015-7647 CVE-2015-7648 Also, Adobe is kn
How to Fix iPhone Crash Text Message Bug

How to Fix iPhone Crash Text Message Bug

May 30, 2015
We reported you about a new bug in the core component of iOS and OS X that causes the device's Messages app to crash and iPhones to reboot if it receives a certain string of characters , Arabic characters , via text message. Many have since fallen victims to this specially crafted sequence of Unicode bug . It is believed that when this malicious string of characters is sent in a text message, it will crash an iThing when the text is displayed as a notification on an iPhone, iPad, or Apple watch. Not iMessages alone, Snapchat and Twitter on iOS devices are also vulnerable to this iPhone crash text bug as they also use the CoreText component to display text on-screen. Here's the unique text that's causing the iPhone crash: effective. Power Ů„ُŮ„ُصّبُŮ„ُلصّبُررً ॣ ॣh ॣ ॣ 冗 It's been really annoying that people all across the world are messaging each other the secret string of unique characters that resets the phone, causing it to turn on and off.
Microsoft Ends Windows 7 Mainstream Support

Microsoft Ends Windows 7 Mainstream Support

Jan 16, 2015
On January 13, 2015, Microsoft's mainstream support for Windows 7 Service Pack (SP) 1 ended, which means the end of free Windows 7's " mainstream support " period, with the operating system now entering "extended support." Many people are still running the aging Windows XP as well as Windows 7. Microsoft already ended its support for Windows XP officially about a year ago on April 8, 2014, and now the company found Windows 7 an old and cranky OS. END OF MAINSTREAM SUPPORT FOR WINDOWS 7 BUT NO WORRIES UNTIL 2020 However, it doesn't mean that the tech giant is going to automatically stop or break your operating system, but it does mean that the company will no longer offer free help and support in case you have any problem with your Windows 7 software. No new features will be added either. Windows 7 is still supported by the company and will continue to receive security updates for at least another five years, i.e. until Jan. 14, 2020. By
First Time Ever Apple Automatically Pushes Security Patch for Mac OS

First Time Ever Apple Automatically Pushes Security Patch for Mac OS

Dec 24, 2014
First time ever in the History, Apple Inc. has pushed out an automatic security update for Macintosh OS X computers to address a critical security issue that, according to the company, was too risky to wait for users to patch after seeking their prior approval. Despite having the ability for years to silently and automatically update its users computers, Apple typically asks its users' permission to approve them manually or automatically before installing any security update of this kind. But, the company has exercised its ability for the very first time to patch a critical security flaw in a component of its OS X operating system called the Network Time Protocol (NTP) . This newly discovered security vulnerability, assigned CVE-2014-9295, became public late last week and affects all operating systems, including OS X and other Linux and Unix distributions, running versions of NTP4 prior to 4.2.8. NTP is used for synchronizing clocks between computer systems and across the globa
Microsoft Releases 7 Security Updates

Microsoft Releases 7 Security Updates

Dec 09, 2014
Last week Microsoft released its Advance Notification for the month of December 2014 Patch Tuesday Updates, and finally today released a total of seven security bulletins, which will address several vulnerabilities in its products, out of which three are marked 'critical' and rest are 'important' in severity. Last month after a big pile of security patches , the company released an an unusual emergency patch to fix a critical vulnerability in Microsoft Windows Kerberos KBC, authentication system used by default in the operating system, that cybercriminals exploited to compromise whole networks of computers. The three critical bulletins affect Internet Explorer, Office and Windows. All the versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) are affected except Server Core, which does not include IE. The critical zero-day IE vulnerability (CVE-2014-8967) was discovered by security researcher Arthur Gerkis of Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) in June this year. By explo
Microsoft Releases Emergency Out-of-Band Patch for Kerberos Bug MS14-068

Microsoft Releases Emergency Out-of-Band Patch for Kerberos Bug MS14-068

Nov 19, 2014
Microsoft today released an " out-of-band " security updates to fix a critical vulnerability in all supported versions of its Windows Server software that cyber criminals are exploiting to compromise whole networks of computers. The Emergency patch release comes just one week after Microsoft provided its monthly security patch updates. The November 2014 Patch Tuesday updates included 16 security patches, five of which were rated by Redmond as "critical." The security update (MS14-068) addresses a vulnerability in the Windows component called Microsoft Windows Kerberos KBC , authentication system used by default in the operating system. The flaw allows an attacker to elevate domain user account privileges and access rights to that of a domain administrator account. As a result, if users unknowingly or accidentally run a malicious software on their system, it could therefore be used to compromise the entire network, which could be more dangerous for those who
Microsoft to Issue 16 Security Patches and 60 Other Updates

Microsoft to Issue 16 Security Patches and 60 Other Updates

Nov 10, 2014
Microsoft has this time quite a big pile of security patches in its November 2014 Patch Tuesday , which will address almost 60 non-security updates for its Windows OS along with 16 security updates . The software giant released Advance Notification for 16 security bulletins, the most in more than three years, which will be addressed as of tomorrow, 11 November, 2014. Five of the bulletins have been marked as " critical ", nine are " importan t" in severity, while two were labeled " moderate ." The updates will patch vulnerabilities in Microsoft's various software including Internet Explorer (IE), Windows, Office, Exchange Server, SharePoint Server and the .NET framework as well. Five critical vulnerabilities affect specific versions of Microsoft Windows, including Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows RT, and Windows Server. One of them also affects Internet Explorer versions 7 through 11 as well. Four of the five critical bugs are said to al
Thousands of High-Risk Vulnerabilities Found in NOAA Satellite System

Thousands of High-Risk Vulnerabilities Found in NOAA Satellite System

Sep 10, 2014
The informational systems that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) run are loaded with several critical vulnerabilities that could leave it vulnerable to cyber attacks. According to the findings of an audit recently conducted by the Department of Commerce's Office of the Inspector General (OIG), the Joint Polar Satellite System's (JPSS) ground system is vulnerable to a large number of high-risk vulnerabilities. The JPSS ground system is used to collect data from several polar-orbiting weather satellites, and distribute the information to users worldwide. This system also provides command, control and data processing for current and future weather satellites. But, the vulnerabilities identified in the system could impair technology controlling the United States' next generation of polar-orbiting environmental satellites. " Our analysis of the JPSS program's assessments of system vulnerabilities found that, since FY 2012, the number of high-ris
Apple to Add Security Alerts for iCloud Users after Celebrity Nude Photo Hack

Apple to Add Security Alerts for iCloud Users after Celebrity Nude Photo Hack

Sep 07, 2014
In the wake of the biggest digital exposure of personal nude selfies belonging to as many as 100 high-profile celebrities, Apple said the company plans to add extra security measures to keep hackers out of user accounts. Not just this, the company also plans to extend its two-factor authentication (2FA) feature to account logins to the iCloud service from mobile device in order to avoid future intrusions. APPLE BROADEN SECURITY WITH NEW RELEASE The company's chief executive, Tim Cook told the Wall Street Journal in an interview that the company will introduce more features to tighten up the security of its users' online accounts, but he " aggressively encourage " users to be more alert to the risks posed by cyber criminals, as you can't leave everything on the service providers. " We want to do everything we can do to protect our customers, because we are as outraged if not more so than they are, " Cook told the Journal. Apple will give alerts to users via emails a
Adobe Releases Critical Security Updates for Flash Player, Acrobat and Adobe Reader

Adobe Releases Critical Security Updates for Flash Player, Acrobat and Adobe Reader

Aug 13, 2014
Adobe has released security updates to fix seven vulnerabilities in its Flash and Air platforms and one in its Reader and Acrobat which, according to the company, is being exploited by attackers in wild " ...in limited, isolated attacks targeting Adobe Reader users on Windows. " The vulnerabilities could allow an attacker to " take control of affected systems " marked critical by the company. A new, out-of-band patch addresses a zero-day vulnerability (CVE-2014-0546) in Adobe Reader and Acrobat that offers an attacker the possibility to bypass sandbox protection and has been leveraged in "limited, isolated attacks" against Windows users. " These updates resolve a sandbox bypass vulnerability that could be exploited to run native code with escalated privileges on Windows, " Adobe warned. The lone vulnerability in Adobe Acrobat and Reader was reported by Kaspersky Lab Global Research and Analysis Team director Costin Raiu and V
Microsoft and Adobe to Release Important Security Patches Next Week

Microsoft and Adobe to Release Important Security Patches Next Week

May 09, 2014
Microsoft has released its advance notification for the month of May 2014 patch Tuesday security updates, that will patch a total of eight flaws issued next Tuesday , May 13. Among the eight vulnerabilities two of them are rated critical, rest all are rated important in severity. Just a week before, Microsoft provided an 'out-of-band security update' for all versions of Internet Explorer (IE) that were affected by the zero-day vulnerability , and since IE6 for Windows XP retired last month, even though it received patches for IE6 zero-day flaw. But, Microsoft has no plan to make any such accommodations this time. 13th MAY 2014 - MICROSOFT PATCH TUESDAY  Next week the security updates will include fixes for vulnerabilities including the critical one in Internet Explorer (IE), along with .NET Framework, Windows, Office and SharePoint for all versions of Windows except Windows XP.  " Our existing policy remains in place, and as such, Microsoft no longer supports
Banks to Pay Microsoft Millions of Dollars for extended Windows XP Support

Banks to Pay Microsoft Millions of Dollars for extended Windows XP Support

Mar 18, 2014
Despite so many warnings from Microsoft and Cyber Security Experts, Windows XP is still being used by a number of Government organizations, Financial institutions as well as big Corporations all around the world. If we look at the statistics then almost 30% of computers you will find that still run Windows XP , including banks, airline companies, and other huge enterprises, the count in real is likely to be even higher than the estimated. But If you stick with Windows XP after April 8 2014 , you might be at a great risk as XP will take its last breath officially on that day and will die! This fact poses danger to its users as they will be exposed to all kinds of threats. Almost thirteen years after it was 'first released' i.e. April 8 when the Redmond, Washington-headquartered Corporation will stop support for its longest running and most successful OS, Windows XP. Continue using Windows XP after April 8, it will serve you as a Dead Zombie, because Microsoft w
Adobe releases important Security Updates for Flash Player

Adobe releases important Security Updates for Flash Player

Mar 11, 2014
Adobe has released security updates to address important vulnerabilities in Adobe Flash Player 12.0.0.70 and earlier versions for Windows and Macintosh and Adobe Flash Player 11.2.202.341 and earlier versions for Linux. The new build intends to address following vulnerabilities in Adobe Flash Player: CVE-2014-0503 ,  reported by security researcher, ' Masato Kinugawa ', that lets   attackers bypass the same-origin policy. Attackers can exploit this issue to access resources from another origin in the context of another domain. This can facilitate cross-site request-forgery attacks. CVE-2014-0504 , reported by ' Jordan Milne ',   that could be used to read the contents of the clipboard(). The Clipboard can be used to store data, such as text and images, but flaw could allow hacker to stuff malware URLs onto your clipboard. Adobe Security Bulletin APSB14-08 tagged the updates with  Priority 2 , ' This update resolves vulnerabilities in a product that
New Apple vulnerability allows Malicious keylogger App to Record User Inputs

New Apple vulnerability allows Malicious keylogger App to Record User Inputs

Feb 26, 2014
Yet another Apple vulnerability has been exposed by security researchers, that can be exploited to track your finger's every action on iOS Devices i.e. iPhone , iPad etc. The exploit reportedly targets a flaw in iOS multitasking capabilities to capture user inputs, according to Security researchers at  FireEye . They found a way to bypass the Apple's app review process effectively and created a proof-of-concept Monitoring app for non-jailbroken iOS 7.0.x devices. The " monitoring " app, that runs in the background of the iPhone is a Keylogger Trojan which could allow hackers to monitor user's activities on the mobile device, including - touches on the screen, home button press, volume button press and TouchID press , and send all collected events to any remote server. According to researchers, their proof-of-concept app works on versions 7.0.4, 7.0.5, 7.0.6, and 6.1.x. " Based on the findings, potential attackers can either use phishing to mislead the vi
Adobe releases another Emergency Security Patch for Flash Player

Adobe releases another Emergency Security Patch for Flash Player

Feb 22, 2014
Security Firm FireEye has uncovered yet another critical zero-day vulnerability in widely used Adobe Flash Software and Adobe has been forced to issue a second emergency patch update  in less than a month. All versions of Adobe Flash Player released before today's patch are vulnerable to the zero-day exploit and the patch addresses a critical vulnerability  CVE-2014-0502 , being used in a watering hole attack -dubbed " Operation Greedywonk",  that allows attackers to remotely take control of infected systems. The vulnerability affects the latest versions of Flash, is reported to be targeting the websites of three non-profit institutions, being redirected to an malicious server hosting the zero-day exploit. " Visitors to the Peter G. Peterson Institute for International Economics (www.piie[.]com) were redirected to an exploit server hosting this Flash zero-day through a hidden iframe ." FireEye said. Security updates tackle a number of flaws includi
Google adds its Chrome apps and extensions to Bug Bounty Program

Google adds its Chrome apps and extensions to Bug Bounty Program

Feb 06, 2014
Google's Vulnerability Reward Program which started in November 2010, offers a hefty reward to the one who find a good vulnerability in its products.  Now Google is getting a little more serious about the security of its Chrome Browser and has expanded its Bug Bounty Program to include all Chrome apps, extensions developed and branded as " by Google ". The Internet is a platform which has become a necessary medium for performing our daily tasks like reading news, paying bills, playing games, scheduling meetings and everything we perform on this platform is possible only because of the various applications maintained by the service providers. " We think developing Chrome extensions securely is relatively easy, but given that extensions like Hangouts and GMail are widely used, we want to make sure efforts to keep them secure are rewarded accordingly. " Google said in a blog post . Not only this, to improve the security of open-source proje
Adobe issues Emergency Flash Player update to patch critical zero-day threat

Adobe issues Emergency Flash Player update to patch critical zero-day threat

Feb 05, 2014
Adobe is recommending that users update their Flash Players immediately. The company has published an emergency security bulletin today, that addresses vulnerabilities the Flash Player and released a patch to fix a vulnerability which is currently being exploited in a sophisticated cyber espionage campaign. " Adobe is aware of reports that an exploit for this vulnerability exists in the wild, and recommends users apply the updates referenced in the security bulletin. " The vulnerability ( CVE-2014-0497 ), allows an attacker to remotely take control of the targeted system hosting Flash. " These updates address a critical vulnerability that could potentially allow an attacker to remotely take control of the affected system " advisory said. The security hole affects the version 12.0.0.43 and earlier for both Windows and Mac OSs and Adobe Flash Player 11.2.202.335 and earlier versions for Linux. The vulnerability was discovered by two researchers
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