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Multiple security vulnerabilities have been discovered in the open-source Netgate pfSense firewall solution called pfSense that could be chained by an attacker to execute arbitrary commands on susceptible appliances. The issues relate to two reflected cross-site scripting ( XSS ) bugs and one command injection flaw, according to new findings from Sonar. "Security inside a local network is often more lax as network administrators trust their firewalls to protect them from remote attacks," security researcher Oskar Zeino-Mahmalat  said . "Potential attackers could have used the discovered vulnerabilities to spy on traffic or attack services inside the local network." Impacting pfSense CE 2.7.0 and below and pfSense Plus 23.05.1 and below, the shortcomings could be weaponized by tricking an authenticated pfSense user (i.e., an admin user) into clicking on a specially crafted URL, which contains an XSS payload that activates command injection. A brief description

Security researchers have warned about an "easily exploitable" flaw in the Microsoft Visual Studio installer that could be abused by a malicious actor to impersonate a legitimate publisher and distribute malicious extensions. "A threat actor could impersonate a popular publisher and issue a malicious extension to compromise a targeted system," Varonis researcher Dolev Taler  said . "Malicious extensions have been used to steal sensitive information, silently access and change code, or take full control of a system." The vulnerability, which is tracked as  CVE-2023-28299  (CVSS score: 5.5), was addressed by Microsoft as part of its  Patch Tuesday updates  for April 2023, describing it as a spoofing flaw. The bug discovered by Varonis has to do with the Visual Studio user interface, which allows for spoofed publisher digital signatures. Specifically, it trivially bypasses a restriction that prevents users from entering information in the "product

As a vCISO, you are responsible for your client's cybersecurity strategy and risk governance. This incorporates multiple disciplines, from research to execution to reporting. Recently, we published a comprehensive playbook for vCISOs, "Your First 100 Days as a vCISO – 5 Steps to Success" , which covers all the phases entailed in launching a successful vCISO engagement, along with recommended actions to take, and step-by-step examples.  Following the success of the playbook and the requests that have come in from the MSP/MSSP community, we decided to drill down into specific parts of vCISO reporting and provide more color and examples. In this article, we focus on how to create compelling narratives within a report, which has a significant impact on the overall MSP/MSSP value proposition.  This article brings the highlights of a recent guided workshop we held, covering what makes a successful report and how it can be used to enhance engagement with your cyber security clients.

New research has found that it is possible for threat actors to abuse a legitimate feature in GitHub Codespaces to deliver malware to victim systems. GitHub Codespaces  is a cloud-based configurable development environment that allows users to debug, maintain, and commit changes to a given codebase from a web browser or via an integration in Visual Studio Code. It also comes with a port forwarding feature that makes it possible to access a web application that's running on a particular port within the codespace directly from the browser on a local machine for testing and debugging purposes. "You can also forward a port manually, label forwarded ports, share forwarded ports with members of your organization, share forwarded ports publicly, and add forwarded ports to the codespace configuration," GitHub  explains  in its documentation. It's  important  to note here that any forwarded port that's made public will also permit any party with knowledge of the URL

A new attack vector targeting the Visual Studio Code extensions marketplace could be leveraged to upload rogue extensions masquerading as their legitimate counterparts with the goal of mounting supply chain attacks. The technique "could act as an entry point for an attack on many organizations," Aqua security researcher Ilay Goldman  said  in a report published last week. VS Code extensions, curated via a  marketplace  made available by Microsoft, allow developers to add programming languages, debuggers, and tools to the VS Code source-code editor to augment their workflows.  "All extensions run with the privileges of the user that has opened the VS Code without any sandbox," Goldman said, explaining the potential risks of using VS Code extensions. "This means that the extension can install any program on your computer including ransomwares, wipers, and more." To that end, Aqua found that not only is it possible for a threat actor to impersonate a po

Severe security flaws uncovered in popular Visual Studio Code extensions could enable attackers to compromise local machines as well as build and deployment systems through a developer's integrated development environment (IDE). The vulnerable extensions could be exploited to run arbitrary code on a developer's system remotely, in what could ultimately pave the way for supply chain attacks. Some of the extensions in question are "LaTeX Workshop," "Rainbow Fart," "Open in Default Browser," and "Instant Markdown," all of which have cumulatively racked up about two million installations between them. "Developer machines usually hold significant credentials, allowing them (directly or indirectly) to interact with many parts of the product," researchers from open-source security platform Snyk  said  in a deep-dive published on May 26. "Leaking a developer's private key can allow a malicious stakeholder to clone important