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Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky on Tuesday responded to an advisory released by Germany's Federal Office of Information Security (BSI) against using the company's security solutions in the country over "doubts about the reliability of the manufacturer." Calling that the decision was made on "political grounds," the company  said  it will "continue to assure our partners and customers of the quality and integrity of our products, and we will be working with the BSI for clarification on its decision and for the means to address its and other regulators' concerns." The statement from Kaspersky follows a warning from Germany's cybersecurity authority, the Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik aka BSI, which recommended "replacing applications from Kaspersky's portfolio of antivirus software with alternative products" due to risks that they could be exploited by Russia for a cyber attack. "Companies and

Multiple security vulnerabilities have been disclosed in popular package managers that, if potentially exploited, could be abused to run arbitrary code and access sensitive information, including source code and access tokens, from compromised machines. It's, however, worth noting that the flaws require the targeted developers to handle a malicious package in conjunction with one of the affected package managers. "This means that an attack cannot be launched directly against a developer machine from remote and requires that the developer is tricked into loading malformed files," SonarSource researcher Paul Gerste  said . "But can you always know and trust the owners of all packages that you use from the internet or company-internal repositories?" Package managers refer to  systems  or a set of tools that are used to automate installing, upgrading, configuring third-party dependencies required for developing applications. While there are inherent  security

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

Technical details have been disclosed regarding a number of security vulnerabilities affecting Moxa's MXview web-based network management system, some of which could be chained by an unauthenticated adversary to achieve remote code execution on unpatched servers. The five security weaknesses "could allow a remote, unauthenticated attacker to execute code on the hosting machine with the highest privileges available: NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM," Claroty security researcher Noam Moshe  said  in a report published this week. Moxa  MXview  is designed for configuring, monitoring, and diagnosing networking devices in industrial networks. The flaws, which affect versions 3.x to 3.2.2 of the network management software, were rectified in  version 3.2.4 or higher  following a coordinated disclosure process in October 2021. "Successful exploitation of these vulnerabilities may allow an attacker to create or overwrite critical files to execute code, gain access to the program, ob

Today's enterprise networks are complex environments with different types of wired and wireless devices being connected and disconnected. The current device discovery solutions have been mainly focused on identifying and monitoring servers, workstation PCs, laptops and infrastructure devices such as network firewalls, switches and routers, because the most valuable information assets of organizations are being stored, processed and transferred over those devices, hence making them the prime target of security breaches and intrusions. However, a new trend has been emerging in the past four years,  where attackers have been targeting purpose-built connected devices  such as network printers and video conferencing systems as an entry point and data exfiltration route. These devices cannot be identified properly by the current IT asset discovery solutions for the following main reasons: Proprietary protocols are often used for managing and monitoring such devices that are not know

VMWare has shipped updates to Workstation, Fusion, and ESXi products to address an "important" security vulnerability that could be weaponized by a threat actor to take control of affected systems. The issue relates to a heap-overflow vulnerability — tracked as  CVE-2021-22045  (CVSS score: 7.7) — that, if successfully exploited, results in the execution of arbitrary code. The company credited Jaanus Kääp, a security researcher with Clarified Security, for reporting the flaw. "A malicious actor with access to a virtual machine with CD-ROM device emulation may be able to exploit this vulnerability in conjunction with other issues to execute code on the hypervisor from a virtual machine," VMware  said  in an advisory published on January 4. "Successful exploitation requires [a] CD image to be attached to the virtual machine." The error affects ESXi versions 6.5, 6.7, and 7.0; Workstation versions 16.x; and Fusion versions 12.x, with the company yet to

Today's cyber attackers are constantly looking for ways to exploit vulnerabilities and infiltrate organizations. To keep up with this evolving threat landscape, security teams must be on the lookout for potential risks around the clock. Since most organizations simply cannot afford to have 24x7 security teams, managed detection and response (MDR) services have become a critical aspect of any modern security stack.  Most organizations must find outsourced MDR providers on top of their existing solutions, but that's not always a feasible solution. XDR provider Cynet offers its MDR service ( learn more here ), which the company calls CyOps, as part of its offering. The service is much more than simply a help desk, though. CyOps offers a thorough MDR service that offers both monitoring and threat hunting, as well as incident response in cases where an attack is successful.  How CyOps operates The key selling point for CyOps MDR is that it enhances organizations' security a

Google has rolled out fixes for five security vulnerabilities in its Chrome web browser, including one which it says is being exploited in the wild, making it the  17th such weakness  to be disclosed since the start of the year. Tracked as  CVE-2021-4102 , the flaw relates to a  use-after-free bug  in the V8 JavaScript and WebAssembly engine, which could have severe consequences ranging from corruption of valid data to the execution of arbitrary code. An anonymous researcher has been credited with discovering and reporting the flaw. As it stands, it's not known how the weakness is being abused in real-world attacks, but the internet giant issued a terse statement that said, "it's aware of reports that an exploit for CVE-2021-4102 exists in the wild." This is done so in an attempt to ensure that a majority of users are updated with a fix and prevent further exploitation by other threat actors. CVE-2021-4102 is the second use-after-free vulnerability in V8 the comp

Mozilla is beginning to roll out Firefox 95 with a new sandboxing technology called RLBox that prevents untrusted code and other security vulnerabilities from causing "accidental defects as well as supply-chain attacks." Dubbed " RLBox " and implemented in collaboration with researchers at the University of California San Diego and the University of Texas, the improved protection mechanism is designed to harden the web browser against potential weaknesses in off-the-shelf libraries used to render audio, video, fonts, images, and other content. To that end, Mozilla is incorporating "fine-grained sandboxing" into five modules, including its  Graphite  font rendering engine,  Hunspell  spell checker,  Ogg  multimedia container format,  Expat  XML parser, and  Woff2  web font compression format. The framework uses  WebAssembly , an open standard that defines a portable binary-code format for executable programs that can be run on modern web browsers, to i

We use Internet-enabled devices in every aspect of our lives today—to find information, shop, bank, do homework, play games, and keep in touch with friends and family. As a result, our devices contain much personal information about us. Also, any great device will get a little clunky and slow over time and the Mac is no exception, and the whole "Macs don't get viruses" claim is a myth. Malware for Macs has increased over the years, and today's Macs are being plagued by adware, scareware, and other potentially unwanted programs as well. If you are worried about your Macbook's performance and security, including unwanted software, ransomware,  CleanMyMac X software has you covered. CleanMyMac is all-in-all software to optimize your Mac's performance and security. It clears out clutter and removes megatons of junk so your computer can run faster, just like it did on day one. The tool is designed to replace several optimization apps for Mac and can be anythi

A new security weakness has been disclosed in the WinRAR trialware file archiver utility for Windows that could be abused by a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code on targeted systems, underscoring how vulnerabilities in such software could beсome a gateway for a roster of attacks. Tracked as CVE-2021-35052, the bug impacts the trial version of the software running version 5.70. "This vulnerability allows an attacker to intercept and modify requests sent to the user of the application," Positive Technologies' Igor Sak-Sakovskiy  said  in a technical write-up. "This can be used to achieve remote code execution (RCE) on a victim's computer." The issue has since been addressed in WinRAR version 6.02 released on June 14, 2021. Sak-Sakovskiy noted that an investigation into WinRAR began after observing a JavaScript error rendered by MSHTML (aka Trident), a proprietary browser engine for the now-discontinued Internet Explorer and which is used in Office

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

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