Software | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Cybersecurity researchers on Thursday disclosed as many as ten critical vulnerabilities impacting CODESYS automation software that could be exploited to achieve remote code execution on programmable logic controllers (PLCs). "To exploit the vulnerabilities, an attacker does not need a username or password; having network access to the industrial controller is enough," researchers from Positive Technologies  said . "The main cause of the vulnerabilities is insufficient verification of input data, which may itself be caused by failure to comply with the secure development recommendations." The Russian cybersecurity firm noted that it detected the vulnerabilities on a PLC offered by WAGO, which, among other automation technology companies such as Beckhoff, Kontron, Moeller, Festo, Mitsubishi, and HollySys, use CODESYS software for  programming and configuring  the controllers. CODESYS offers a development environment for programming controller applications for use

Cybersecurity researchers disclosed details about 13 vulnerabilities in the Nagios network monitoring application that could be abused by an adversary to hijack the infrastructure without any operator intervention. "In a telco setting, where a telco is monitoring thousands of sites, if a customer site is fully compromised, an attacker can use the vulnerabilities to compromise the telco, and then every other monitored customer site," Adi Ashkenazy, CEO of Australian cybersecurity firm Skylight Cyber, told The Hacker News via email. Nagios is an open-source IT infrastructure tool analogous to SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) that offers monitoring and alerting services for servers, network cards, applications, and services. The issues, which consist of a mix of authenticated remote code execution (RCE) and privilege escalation flaws, were discovered and reported to Nagios in October 2020, following which they were  remediated  in  November . Chief among them i

As cloud technology evolves, so does the challenge of securing sensitive data. In a world where data duplication and sprawl are common, organizations face increased risks of non-compliance and unauthorized data breaches. Sentra's DSPM (Data Security Posture Management) emerges as a comprehensive solution, offering continuous discovery and accurate classification of sensitive data in the cloud. This informative webinar, " Securing Sensitive Data Starts with Discovery and Classification: SoFi's DSPM Story " unveils the success story of SoFi, a pioneering cloud-native financial services provider, and its journey with Sentra's DSPM. It explores the challenges and triumphs in securing cloud data and a roadmap to implementing effective DSPM strategies in your organization. Expert Panel: Aviv Zisso:  As Director of Customer Success at Sentra, Aviv brings deep insights into data security needs and solutions. Pritam H Mungse:  SoFi's Director of Product Security, Pr

The Apache Software Foundation on Friday addressed a high severity vulnerability in Apache OFBiz that could have allowed an unauthenticated adversary to remotely seize control of the open-source enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. Tracked as  CVE-2021-26295 , the flaw affects all versions of the software prior to  17.12.06  and employs an "unsafe deserialization" as an attack vector to permit unauthorized remote attackers to execute arbitrary code on a server directly. OFBiz  is a Java-based web framework for automating enterprise processes and offers a wide range of functionality, including accounting, customer relationship management, manufacturing operations management, order management, supply chain fulfillment, and warehouse management system, among others. Specifically, by exploiting this flaw, a malicious party can tamper with serialized data to insert arbitrary code that, when deserialized, can potentially result in remote code execution. "An unauthe

A pair of critical vulnerabilities in a popular bulletin board software called MyBB could have been chained together to achieve remote code execution (RCE) without the need for prior access to a privileged account. The flaws, which were discovered by independent security researchers Simon Scannell and Carl Smith, were reported to the MyBB Team on February 22, following which it  released  an update (version 1.8.26) on March 10 addressing the issues. MyBB, formerly MyBBoard and originally MyBulletinBoard, is free and open-source forum software developed using PHP and MySQL. According to internet assets search engine Spyse, there are at least 2,100 potentially vulnerable domains that have MyBB installed. According to the researchers, the first issue — a nested auto URL persistent XSS vulnerability (CVE-2021-27889) — stems from how MyBB parses messages containing URLs during the rendering process, thus enabling any unprivileged forum user to embed stored XSS payloads into threads, p

Hackers with suspected ties to Iran are actively targeting academia, government agencies, and tourism entities in the Middle East and neighboring regions as part of an espionage campaign aimed at data theft. Dubbed "Earth Vetala" by Trend Micro, the latest finding expands on previous research  published by Anomali  last month, which found evidence of malicious activity aimed at UAE and Kuwait government agencies by exploiting ScreenConnect remote management tool.  The cybersecurity firm linked the ongoing attacks with moderate confidence to a threat actor widely tracked as  MuddyWater , an Iranian hacker group known for its offensives primarily against Middle Eastern nations. Earth Vetala is said to have leveraged spear-phishing emails containing embedded links to a popular file-sharing service called Onehub to distribute malware that ranged from password dumping utilities to custom backdoors, before initiating communications with a command-and-control (C2) server to exe

Cybersecurity researchers on Wednesday disclosed three severe security vulnerabilities impacting SolarWinds products, the most severe of which could have been exploited to achieve remote code execution with elevated privileges. Two of the flaws (CVE-2021-25274 and CVE-2021-25275) were identified in the SolarWinds Orion Platform, while a third separate weakness (CVE-2021-25276) was found in the company's Serv-U FTP server for Windows,  said  cybersecurity firm Trustwave in a technical analysis. None of the three vulnerabilities are believed to have been exploited in any "in the wild" attacks or during the unprecedented  supply chain attack  targeting the Orion Platform that came to light last December. The two sets of vulnerabilities in Orion and Serv-U FTP were disclosed to SolarWinds on December 30, 2020, and January 4, 2021, respectively, following which the company resolved the issues on January 22 and January 25. It's highly recommended that users install th

The US Cybersecurity Infrastructure and Security Agency (CISA) has  warned  of critical vulnerabilities in a low-level TCP/IP software library developed by Treck that, if weaponized, could allow remote attackers to run arbitrary commands and mount denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. The four flaws affect Treck TCP/IP stack version 6.0.1.67 and earlier and were reported to the company by Intel. Two of these are rated critical in severity. Treck's embedded TCP/IP stack is deployed worldwide in manufacturing, information technology, healthcare, and transportation systems. The most severe of them is a heap-based buffer overflow vulnerability ( CVE-2020-25066 ) in the Treck HTTP Server component that could permit an adversary to crash or reset the target device and even execute remote code. It has a CVSS score of 9.8 out of a maximum of 10. The second flaw is an out-of-bounds write in the IPv6 component ( CVE-2020-27337 , CVSS score 9.1) that could be exploited by an unauthenticated

The massive state-sponsored  espionage campaign  that compromised software maker SolarWinds also targeted Microsoft, as the unfolding investigation into the hacking spree reveals the incident may have been far more wider in scope, sophistication, and impact than previously thought. News of Microsoft's compromise was first reported by Reuters , which also said the company's own products were then used to strike other victims by leveraging its cloud offerings, citing people familiar with the matter. The Windows maker, however, denied the threat actor had infiltrated its production systems to stage further attacks against its customers. In a statement to The Hacker News via email, the company said — "Like other SolarWinds customers, we have been actively looking for indicators of this actor and can confirm that we detected malicious SolarWinds binaries in our environment, which we isolated and removed. We have not found evidence of access to production services or custom

How can your app hook into a geocoding service that offers forward and reverse geocoding and an auto-completion facility? Geocoding turns a location name or address into geocoordinates. The service gets used by thousands of applications like Uber and Grubhub to track and plot their map data. Yet, it can also help web development by enhancing UX through reverse geocoding. Not to mention auto-completing forms to make the likes of checking-out easier. This article examines Geocode API, the premier provider of geocoding services. Read on to learn what the API offers, how it works, and what sets it apart. You'll discover how its free plan grants you access to 350.000 monthly requests! What is Geocoding? Geocoding describes  how to turn a location name or description and convert them into detailed coordinates. It also offers this service in reverse, i.e., convert coordinates into location information. Results can include: GPS coordinates Full address information Accuracy and

SolarWinds, the enterprise monitoring software provider which found itself at the epicenter of the most  consequential supply chain attacks , said as many as 18,000 of its high-profile customers might have installed a tainted version of its Orion products. The acknowledgment comes as part of a new filing made by the company to the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday. The Texas-based company serves more than 300,000 customers worldwide, including every branch of the US military and four-fifths of the Fortune 500 companies. The "incident was likely the result of a highly sophisticated, targeted and manual supply chain attack by an outside nation state," SolarWinds said in the  regulatory disclosure , adding it "currently believes the actual number of customers that may have had an installation of the Orion products that contained this vulnerability to be fewer than 18,000." The company also reiterated in its  security advisory  that besides 2019.4 HF

Critical flaws in a core networking library powering Valve's online gaming functionality could have allowed malicious actors to remotely crash games and even take control over affected third-party game servers. "An attacker could remotely crash an opponent's game client to force a win or even perform a 'nuclear rage quit' and crash the Valve game server to end the game completely," Check Point Research's Eyal Itkin noted in an analysis published today. "Potentially even more damaging, attackers could remotely take over third-party developer game servers to execute arbitrary code." Valve is a popular US-based video game developer and publisher behind the game software distribution platform Steam and several titles such as Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Portal, Day of Defeat, Team Fortress, Left 4 Dead, and Dota. The four flaws (CVE-2020-6016 through CVE-2020-6019) were uncovered in Valve's Game Networking Sockets ( GNS ) or Steam Sockets libr

The US National Security Agency (NSA) on Monday issued an  advisory  warning that Russian threat actors are leveraging recently disclosed VMware vulnerability to install malware on corporate systems and access protected data. Specifics regarding the identities of the threat actor exploiting the  VMware flaw  or when these attacks started were not disclosed. The development comes two weeks after the virtualization software company publicly disclosed the flaw—affecting VMware Workspace One Access, Access Connector, Identity Manager, and Identity Manager Connector products for Windows and Linux—without releasing a patch and three days after releasing a software update to fix it. In late November, VMware pushed  temporary workarounds  to address the issue, stating permanent patches for the flaw were "forthcoming." But it wasn't until December 3rd the escalation-of-privileges bug was entirely resolved. That same day, the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agenc

There is no question that attackers are going after your sensitive account data. Passwords have long been a target of those looking to compromise your environment. Why would an attacker take the long, complicated way if they have the keys to the front door? No matter how extensive your security solutions are, protecting the various systems in your environment, your organization may likely be an easy target without proper password security. An especially vulnerable type of password is a  breached password , a.k.a "pwned" password. What is a breached password? How do you discover breached passwords in your environment? How can organizations effectively protect their end-users from using these types of passwords? The Danger of Compromised Accounts The  IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report  2020 noted compromised credentials as one of the primary contributors to malicious data breaches in the report's key findings. It noted: "Stolen or compromised credentials were the

Set of must-have online security tools that we believe may make a real difference to your cybersecurity program and improve your 2021 budget planning. In September, Gartner published a  list  of "Top 9 Security and Risk Trends for 2020" putting a bold emphasis on the growing complexity and size of the modern threat landscape. Incomplete visibility of external Attack surfaces led to the dramatic increase in disastrous breaches and data leaks during 2020, compromising PII and other sensitive data of millions of victims. These incidents stemmed from sophisticated intrusions by malicious nation-state actors and APT hacking groups, human error, and widespread misconfigurations exposing unprotected cloud storage or databases with confidential data to the Internet. Gartner's security analysts recommend automating laborious security tasks and processes, amid the ongoing shortage of cybersecurity skills, and promptly addressing emerging cloud and containers security risks.  G

A critical vulnerability uncovered in Real-Time Automation's (RTA) 499ES EtherNet/IP ( ENIP ) stack could open up the industrial control systems to remote attacks by adversaries. RTA's ENIP stack is one of the widely used industrial automation devices and is billed as the "standard for factory floor I/O applications in North America." "Successful exploitation of this vulnerability could cause a denial-of-service condition, and a buffer overflow may allow remote code execution," the US cybersecurity and infrastructure agency (CISA) said in an  advisory . As of yet, no known public exploits have been found to target this vulnerability. However, "according to public search engines for Internet-connected devices (e.g. shodan.io) there are more than 8,000 ENIP-compatible internet-facing devices." Tracked as CVE-2020-25159 , the flaw is rated 9.8 out of 10 in severity by the industry-standard Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) and impacts a