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Microsoft on Tuesday rolled out  security patches  to contain a total of 71 vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows and other software, including a fix for an actively exploited privilege escalation vulnerability that could be exploited in conjunction with remote code execution bugs to take control over vulnerable systems. Two of the addressed security flaws are rated Critical, 68 are rated Important, and one is rated Low in severity, with three of the issues listed as publicly known at the time of the release. The four zero-days are as follows — CVE-2021-40449  (CVSS score: 7.8) - Win32k Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability CVE-2021-41335  (CVSS score: 7.8) - Windows Kernel Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability CVE-2021-40469  (CVSS score: 7.2) - Windows DNS Server Remote Code Execution Vulnerability CVE-2021-41338  (CVSS score: 5.5) - Windows AppContainer Firewall Rules Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability At the top of the list is CVE-2021-40449, a use-after-free vulnerability

The maintainers of LibreOffice and OpenOffice have shipped security updates to their productivity software to remediate multiple vulnerabilities that could be weaponized by malicious actors to alter documents to make them appear as if they are digitally signed by a trusted source. The list of the three flaws is as follows — CVE-2021-41830  /  CVE-2021-25633  - Content and Macro Manipulation with Double Certificate Attack CVE-2021-41831  /  CVE-2021-25634  - Timestamp Manipulation with Signature Wrapping CVE-2021-41832  /  CVE-2021-25635  - Content Manipulation with Certificate Validation Attack Successful exploitation of the vulnerabilities could permit an attacker to  manipulate the timestamp  of signed ODF documents, and worse,  alter the contents  of a document or  self-sign a document  with an untrusted signature, which is then tweaked to change the  signature algorithm  to an invalid or unknown algorithm.  In both the latter two attack scenarios — stemming as a result o

Identities now transcend human boundaries. Within each line of code and every API call lies a non-human identity. These entities act as programmatic access keys, enabling authentication and facilitating interactions among systems and services, which are essential for every API call, database query, or storage account access. As we depend on multi-factor authentication and passwords to safeguard human identities, a pressing question arises: How do we guarantee the security and integrity of these non-human counterparts? How do we authenticate, authorize, and regulate access for entities devoid of life but crucial for the functioning of critical systems? Let's break it down. The challenge Imagine a cloud-native application as a bustling metropolis of tiny neighborhoods known as microservices, all neatly packed into containers. These microservices function akin to diligent worker bees, each diligently performing its designated task, be it processing data, verifying credentials, or

Networking equipment maker Cisco Systems has rolled out patches to address three critical security vulnerabilities in its IOS XE network operating system that remote attackers could potentially abuse to execute arbitrary code with administrative privileges and trigger a denial-of-service (DoS) condition on vulnerable devices. The list of three flaws is as follows - CVE-2021-34770  (CVSS score: 10.0) - Cisco IOS XE Software for Catalyst 9000 Family Wireless Controllers CAPWAP Remote Code Execution Vulnerability CVE-2021-34727  (CVSS score: 9.8) - Cisco IOS XE SD-WAN Software Buffer Overflow Vulnerability CVE-2021-1619  (CVSS score: 9.8) - Cisco IOS XE Software NETCONF and RESTCONF Authentication Bypass Vulnerability The most severe of the issues is CVE-2021-34770, which Cisco calls a "logic error" that occurs during the processing of  CAPWAP  (Control And Provisioning of Wireless Access Points) packets that enable a central wireless Controller to manage a group of wire

In the classic children's movie 'The Princess Bride,' one of the characters utters the phrase, " You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means ." It's freely used as a response to someone's misuse or misunderstanding of a word or phrase. "Response Automation" is another one of those phrases that have different meanings to different people. It's bantered around by the security vendor community so much that its precise meaning, when used, is unclear. Many vendors throw the term out without explaining exactly what they mean by the phrase. One vendor's response automation might, and often do, perform very differently from another vendor's response automation capabilities. But, hey, they have "response automation!" A recently published guide is meant to make sense of Response Automation ( Download here ). It discusses the evolution of response automation and distinguishes five increasingly capabl

Cisco Systems on Wednesday issued patches to address a critical security vulnerability affecting the Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC) interface used in its Nexus 9000 Series Switches that could be potentially abused to read or write arbitrary files on a vulnerable system. Tracked as  CVE-2021-1577  (CVSS score: 9.1), the issue — which is due to improper access control — could enable an unauthenticated, remote attacker to upload a file to the appliances. " A successful exploit could allow the attacker to read or write arbitrary files on an affected device," the company  said  in an advisory. The APIC appliance is a centralized, clustered controller that programmatically automates network provisioning and control based on the application requirements and policies across physical and virtual environments. Cisco said it discovered the vulnerability during internal security testing by the Cisco Advanced Security Initiatives Group (ASIG). Additionally, the

A major vulnerability affecting older versions of BlackBerry's QNX Real-Time Operating System (RTOS) could allow malicious actors to cripple and gain control of a variety of products, including cars, medical, and industrial equipment. The shortcoming (CVE-2021-22156, CVSS score: 9.0) is part of a broader collection of flaws, collectively dubbed  BadAlloc , that was originally disclosed by Microsoft in April 2021, which could open a backdoor into many of these devices, allowing attackers to commandeer them or disrupt their operations. "A remote attacker could exploit CVE-2021-22156 to cause a denial-of-service condition or execute arbitrary code on affected devices," the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)  said  in a Tuesday bulletin. As of writing, there is no evidence of active exploitation of the vulnerability. BlackBerry QNX technology is  used  worldwide by over 195 million vehicles and embedded systems across a wide range of industries,

As many as eight Python packages that were downloaded more than 30,000 times have been removed from the PyPI portal for containing malicious code, once again highlighting how software package repositories are evolving into a popular target for supply chain attacks. "Lack of moderation and automated security controls in public software repositories allow even inexperienced attackers to use them as a platform to spread malware, whether through typosquatting, dependency confusion, or simple social engineering attacks," JFrog researchers Andrey Polkovnichenko, Omer Kaspi, and Shachar Menashe  said  Thursday. PyPI, short for Python Package Index, is the official third-party software repository for Python, with package manager utilities like  pip  relying on it as the default source for packages and their dependencies. The Python packages in question, which were found to be obfuscated using Base64 encoding, are listed below - pytagora (uploaded by leonora123) pytagora2 (upl

Four security vulnerabilities have been uncovered in the  Sage X3  enterprise resource planning (ERP) product, two of which could be chained together as part of an attack sequence to enable adversaries to execute malicious commands and take control of vulnerable systems. These issues were discovered by researchers from Rapid7, who notified Sage Group of their findings on Feb. 3, 2021. The vendor has since rolled out  fixes  in recent releases for Sage X3 Version 9 (Syracuse 9.22.7.2), Sage X3 HR & Payroll Version 9 (Syracuse 9.24.1.3), Sage X3 Version 11 (Syracuse 11.25.2.6), and Sage X3 Version 12 (Syracuse 12.10.2.8) that were shipped in March. The list of vulnerabilities is as follows - CVE-2020-7388  (CVSS score: 10.0) - Sage X3 Unauthenticated Remote Command Execution (RCE) as SYSTEM in AdxDSrv.exe component CVE-2020-7389  (CVSS score" 5.5) - System "CHAINE" Variable Script Command Injection (No fix planned) CVE-2020-7387  (CVSS score: 5.3) - Sage X3 Ins

An analysis of off-the-shelf packages hosted on the NuGet repository has revealed 51 unique software components to be vulnerable to actively exploited, high-severity vulnerabilities, once again underscoring the threat posed by third-party dependencies to the software development process. In light of the growing number of cyber incidents that target the software supply chain, there is an urgent need to assess such third-party modules for any security risks and minimize the attack surface, ReversingLabs researcher Karlo Zanki said in a report shared with The Hacker News. NuGet  is a Microsoft-supported mechanism for the .NET platform and functions as a package manager designed to enable developers to share reusable code. The framework maintains a central repository of over 264,000 unique packages that have collectively produced more than 109 billion package downloads. "All identified precompiled software components in our research were different versions of 7Zip, WinSCP and PuT

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

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