Shellshock | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

The year is about to end, but serious threats like  Shellshock is " far from over ". Cyber criminals are actively exploiting this critical GNU Bash vulnerability to target those network attached storage devices that are still not patched and ready for exploitation. Security researchers have unearthed a malicious worm that is designed to plant backdoors on network-attached storage (NAS) systems made by Taiwan-based QNAP and gain full access to the contents of those devices. The worm is spread among QNAP devices, which run an embedded Linux operating system, by the exploitation of the GNU Bash vulnerability known as ShellShock or Bash, according to security researchers at the Sans Institute. QNAP vendor released a patch in early October to address the flaw in its Turbo NAS product, but because the patches are not automatic or easy to apply for many users, so a statistically significant portion of systems remain vulnerable and exposed to the Bash bug . Sh

Cyber criminals are using new malware variants by exploiting GNU Bash vulnerability referred to as ShellShock ( CVE-2014-6271 ) in order to infect embedded devices running BusyBox software, according to a researcher. A new variant of " Bashlite " malware targeting devices running BusyBox software was spotted by the researchers at Trend Micro shortly after the public disclosure of the ShellShock vulnerability. BusyBox provides set of command line utilities that are specifically designed to run in constrained embedded environments. At compile time, different capabilities can be left out, reducing the size of the binaries, and efforts are made to make them memory efficient. This makes the software an excellent candidate for use in consumer electronics devices, which seem to have been the items of interest in this case. The malware variant, detected as ELF_BASHLITE.A (ELF_FLOODER.W) , when executed on victim's machine, scans compromised networks for device

Imagine a world where the software that powers your favorite apps, secures your online transactions, and keeps your digital life could be outsmarted and taken over by a cleverly disguised piece of code. This isn't a plot from the latest cyber-thriller; it's actually been a reality for years now. How this will change – in a positive or negative direction – as artificial intelligence (AI) takes on a larger role in software development is one of the big uncertainties related to this brave new world. In an era where AI promises to revolutionize how we live and work, the conversation about its security implications cannot be sidelined. As we increasingly rely on AI for tasks ranging from mundane to mission-critical, the question is no longer just, "Can AI  boost cybersecurity ?" (sure!), but also "Can AI  be hacked? " (yes!), "Can one use AI  to hack? " (of course!), and "Will AI  produce secure software ?" (well…). This thought leadership article is about the latter. Cydrill  (a

Another Heartbleed-like vulnerability has been discovered in the decade old but still widely used Secure Sockets Layer ( SSL ) 3.0 cryptographic protocol that could allow an attacker to decrypt contents of encrypted connections to websites. Google's Security Team revealed on Tuesday that the most widely used web encryption standard SSL 3.0 has a major security vulnerability that could be exploited to steal sensitive data. The flaw affects any product that follows the Secure layer version 3, including Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer. Researchers dubbed the attack as " POODLE ," stands for Padding Oracle On Downgraded Legacy Encryption , which allows an attacker to perform a man-in-the-middle attack in order to decrypt HTTP cookies. The POODLE attack can force a connection to "fallback" to SSL 3.0, where it is then possible to steal cookies, which are meant to store personal data, website preferences or even passwords. Three Google security engineers - Bodo Möll

On one hand where more than half of the Internet is considering the Bash vulnerability to be severe, Apple says the vast majority of Mac computer users are not at risk from the recently discovered vulnerability in the Bash command-line interpreter – aka the " Shellshock " bug that could allow hackers to take over an operating system completely. Apple has issued a public statement in response to this issue, assuring its OS X users that most of them are safe from any potential attacks through the ShellShock Vulnerability , which security experts have warned affect operating systems, including Mac's OS X. " The vast majority of OS X users are not at risk to recently reported bash vulnerabilities ," Apple said. " Bash, a UNIX command shell and language included in OS X, has a weakness that could allow unauthorized users to remotely gain control of vulnerable systems. With OS X, systems are safe by default and not exposed to remote exploits of bash unl

Researchers on Thursday discovered a critical remotely exploitable vulnerability in the widely used command-line shell GNU Bourne Again Shell ( Bash ), dubbed " Shellshock " which affects most of the Linux distributions and servers worldwide, and may already have been exploited in the wild to take over Web servers as part of a botnet that is currently trying to infect other servers as well. BOTNET ATTACK IN THE WILD The bot was discovered by the security researcher with the Twitter handle @yinettesys , who reported it on Github and said it appeared to be remotely controlled by miscreants, which indicates that the vulnerability is already being used maliciously by the hackers. The vulnerability (CVE-2014-6271) , which came to light on Wednesday, affects versions 1.14 through 4.3 of GNU Bash and could become a dangerous threat to Linux/Unix and Apple users if the patches to BASH are not applied to the operating systems. However, the patches for the vulnerabil

A Critical remotely exploitable vulnerability has been discovered in the widely used Linux and Unix command-line shell, known as Bash , aka the GNU Bourne Again Shell , leaving countless websites, servers, PCs, OS X Macs, various home routers, and many more open to the cyber criminals. Earlier today, Stephane Chazelas publicly disclosed the technical details of the remote code execution vulnerability in Bash which affects most of the Linux distributions and servers worldwide. REMOTELY EXPLOITABLE SHELLSHOCK The vulnerability (CVE-2014-6271) affects versions 1.14 through 4.3 of GNU Bash and being named as Bash Bug , and Shellshock by the Security researchers on the Internet discussions. According to the technical details, a hacker could exploit this bash bug to execute shell commands remotely on a target machine using specifically crafted variables. " In many common configurations, this vulnerability is exploitable over the network, " Stephane said. This 22-ye