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A four-year-old severe vulnerability has been discovered in the Secure Shell (SSH) implementation library known as Libssh that could allow anyone to completely bypass authentication and gain unfettered administrative control over a vulnerable server without requiring a password. The security vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2018-10933 , is an authentication-bypass issue that was introduced in Libssh version 0.6 released earlier 2014, leaving thousands of enterprise servers open to hackers for the last four years. But before you get frightened, you should know that neither the widely used OpenSSH nor Github's implementation of libssh was affected by the vulnerability. The vulnerability resides due to a coding error in Libssh and is "ridiculously simple" to exploit. According to a security advisory published Tuesday, all an attacker needs to do is sending an "SSH2_MSG_USERAUTH_SUCCESS" message to a server with an SSH connection enabled when it expects an &

What if just receiving a video call on WhatsApp could hack your smartphone? This sounds filmy, but Google Project Zero security researcher Natalie Silvanovich found a critical vulnerability in WhatsApp messenger that could have allowed hackers to remotely take full control of your WhatsApp just by video calling you over the messaging app. The vulnerability is a memory heap overflow issue which is triggered when a user receives a specially crafted malformed RTP packet via a video call request, which results in the corruption error and crashing the WhatsApp mobile app. Since the vulnerability affect RTP (Real-time Transport Protocol) implementation of Whatsapp, the flaw affects Android and iOS apps, but not WhatsApp Web that relies on WebRTC for video calls. Silvanovich also published a proof-of-concept exploit, along with the instructions for reproducing the WhatsApp attack. Although the proof-of-concept published by Silvanovich only triggers memory corruption, another Go

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

Google is going to shut down its social media network Google+ after the company suffered a massive data breach that exposed the private data of hundreds of thousands of Google Plus users to third-party developers. According to the tech giant, a security vulnerability in one of Google+'s People APIs allowed third-party developers to access data for more than 500,000 users, including their usernames, email addresses, occupation, date of birth, profile photos, and gender-related information. Since Google+ servers do not keep API logs for more than two weeks, the company cannot confirm the number of users impacted by the vulnerability. However, Google assured its users that the company found no evidence that any developer was aware of this bug, or that the profile data was misused by any of the 438 developers that could have had access. "However, we ran a detailed analysis over the two weeks prior to patching the bug, and from that analysis, the Profiles of up to 500,00

A known vulnerability in MikroTik routers is potentially far more dangerous than previously thought. A cybersecurity researcher from Tenable Research has released a new proof-of-concept (PoC) RCE attack for an old directory traversal vulnerability that was found and patched within a day of its discovery in April this year. The vulnerability, identified as CVE-2018-14847, was initially rated as medium in severity but should now be rated critical because the new hacking technique used against vulnerable MikroTik routers allows attackers to remotely execute code on affected devices and gain a root shell. The vulnerability impacts Winbox—a management component for administrators to set up their routers using a Web-based interface—and a Windows GUI application for the RouterOS software used by the MikroTik devices. The vulnerability allows "remote attackers to bypass authentication and read arbitrary files by modifying a request to change one byte related to a Session ID.&qu

Logged out from your Facebook account automatically? Well you're not alone… Facebook just admitted that an unknown hacker or a group of hackers exploited a zero-day vulnerability in its social media platform that allowed them to steal secret access tokens for more than 50 million accounts. UPDATE:  10 Important Updates You Need To Know About the Latest Facebook Hacking Incident . In a brief blog post published Friday, Facebook revealed that its security team discovered the attack three days ago (on 25 September) and they are still investigating the security incident. The vulnerability, whose technical details has yet not been disclosed and now patched by Facebook, resided in the "View As" feature—an option that allows users to find out what other Facebook users would see if they visit your profile. According to the social media giant, the vulnerability allowed hackers to steal secret access tokens that could then be used to directly access users' private in

A cybersecurity researcher with Google Project Zero has released the details, and a proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit for a high severity vulnerability that exists in Linux kernel since kernel version 3.16 through 4.18.8. Discovered by white hat hacker Jann Horn, the kernel vulnerability (CVE-2018-17182) is a cache invalidation bug in the Linux memory management subsystem that leads to use-after-free vulnerability, which if exploited, could allow an attacker to gain root privileges on the targeted system. The use-after-free (UAF) vulnerabilities are a class of memory corruption bug that can be exploited by unprivileged users to corrupt or alter data in memory, enabling them to cause a denial of service (system crash) or escalate privileges to gain administrative access on a system. Linux Kernel Exploit Takes an Hour to Gain Root Access However, Horn says his PoC Linux kernel exploit made available to the public "takes about an hour to run before popping a root shell."

Bad news for Apple. The Chinese hacking team Pangu is back and has once again surprised everyone with a jailbreak for iOS 12 running on the brand-new iPhone XS. Well, that was really fast. Pangu jailbreak team has been quiet for a while, since it last released the untethered jailbreak tool for iOS 9 back in October 2015. Jailbreaking is a process of removing limitations on Apple's iOS devices so users can install third-party software not certified by Apple. Today, Android and iOS security researcher Min(Spark) Zheng shared a Tweet with two screenshots showing a working jailbreak on Apple's newly released iPhone XS with A12 Bionic chip achieved by one of the Pangu researchers. The Tweet also revealed that the iOS 12 jailbreak works by bypassing a functional PAC (Pointer authentication codes) mitigation implemented in the new Apple's A12 Bionic chip. Moreover, since the hardware of iPhone XS is very much identical to iPhone XS Max, the new iOS 12 jailbreak expl

The same day Apple released its latest macOS Mojave operating system, a security researcher demonstrated a potential way to bypass new privacy implementations in macOS using just a few lines of code and access sensitive user data. On Monday, Apple started rolling out its new macOS Mojave 10.14 operating system update to its users, which includes a number of new privacy and security controls, including authorization prompts. Mojave 10.14 now pops up authorization prompts that require direct and real user interaction before any unprivileged third-party application can tap into users' sensitive information, such as address books, location data, message archives, Mail, and photos. Patrick Wardle, an ex-NSA hacker and now chief research officer at Digita Security, discovered a zero-day flaw that could allow an attacker to bypass authorization prompts and access users' personal information by using an unprivileged app. Wardle tweeted a video Monday showing how he was able

Security researchers have published the details and proof-of-concept (PoC) exploits of an integer overflow vulnerability in the Linux kernel that could allow an unprivileged user to gain superuser access to the targeted system. The vulnerability, discovered by cloud-based security and compliance solutions provider Qualys, which has been dubbed "Mutagen Astronomy," affects the kernel versions released between July 2007 and July 2017, impacting the Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS, and Debian distributions. The Mutagen Astronomy vulnerability tracked as CVE-2018-14634, is a type of a local privilege escalation issue—one of the most common issues with operating systems as a whole—and exists in the Linux kernel's create_elf_tables() function that operates the memory tables. To successfully exploit this vulnerability, attackers need to have access to the targeted system and run their exploit that leads to a buffer overflow, thereby resulting in the execution of malici

The Bitcoin Core development team has released an important update to patch a major DDoS vulnerability in its underlying software that could have been fatal to the Bitcoin Network, which is usually known as the most hack-proof and secure blockchain. The DDoS vulnerability, identified as CVE-2018-17144, has been found in the Bitcoin Core wallet software, which could potentially be exploited by anyone capable of mining BTC to crash Bitcoin Core nodes running software versions 0.14.0 to 0.16.2. In other words, Bitcoin miners could have brought down the entire blockchain either by overflooding the block with duplicate transactions, resulting in blockage of transaction confirmation from other people or by flooding the nodes of the Bitcoin P2P network and over-utilizing the bandwidth. The vulnerability had been around since March last year, but the team says nobody noticed the bug or nobody was willing to incur the expense of exploiting it. According to the bitcoin core developers

A security researcher has publicly disclosed an unpatched zero-day vulnerability in all supported versions of Microsoft Windows operating system (including server editions) after the company failed to patch a responsibly disclosed bug within the 120-days deadline. Discovered by Lucas Leong of the Trend Micro Security Research team, the zero-day vulnerability resides in Microsoft Jet Database Engine that could allow an attacker to remotely execute malicious code on any vulnerable Windows computer. The Microsoft JET Database Engine, or simply JET (Joint Engine Technology), is a database engine integrated within several Microsoft products, including Microsoft Access and Visual Basic. According to the an  advisory  released by Zero Day Initiative (ZDI), the vulnerability is due to a problem with the management of indexes in the Jet database engine that, if exploited successfully, can cause an out-out-bounds memory write, leading to remote code execution. An attacker must convi

A high-severity vulnerability has been discovered in 4G-based wireless 4GEE Mini modem sold by mobile operator EE that could allow an attacker to run a malicious program on a targeted computer with the highest level of privileges in the system. The vulnerability—discovered by 20-year-old Osanda Malith , a Sri Lankan security researcher at ZeroDayLab—can be exploited by a low privileged user account to escalate privileges on any Windows computer that had once connected to the EE Mini modem via USB. This, in turn, would allow an attacker to gain full system access to the targeted remote computer and thereby, perform any malicious actions, such as installing malware, rootkits, keylogger, or stealing personal information. 4G Mini WiFi modem is manufactured by Alcatel and sold by EE, a mobile operator owned by BT Group— Britain's largest digital communications company that serves over 31 million connections across its mobile, fixed and wholesale networks. How Does the Attack

Security researchers have discovered an authentication bypass vulnerability in Western Digital's My Cloud NAS devices that potentially allows an unauthenticated attacker to gain admin-level control to the affected devices. Western Digital's My Cloud (WD My Cloud) is one of the most popular network-attached storage (NAS) devices which is being used by businesses and individuals to host their files, as well as backup and sync them with various cloud and web-based services. The WD My Cloud devices let users not only share files in a home network but its private cloud feature also allows them to access their data from anywhere around the world at any time. However, security researchers at Securify have discovered an authentication bypass vulnerability on the WD My Cloud NAS boxes that could allow unauthenticated attackers with network access to the device to escalate their privileges to admin-level without needing to provide a password. This would eventually allow attack

Security researchers have revealed a new attack to steal passwords, encryption keys and other sensitive information stored on most modern computers, even those with full disk encryption. The attack is a new variation of a traditional Cold Boot Attack , which is around since 2008 and lets attackers steal information that briefly remains in the memory (RAM) after the computer is shut down. However, to make the cold boot attacks less effective, most modern computers come bundled with a safeguard, created by the Trusted Computing Group (TCG), that overwrites the contents of the RAM when the power on the device is restored, preventing the data from being read. Now, researchers from Finnish cyber-security firm F-Secure figured out a new way to disable this overwrite security measure by physically manipulating the computer's firmware, potentially allowing attackers to recover sensitive data stored on the computer after a cold reboot in a matter of few minutes. "Cold boot

Despite having proper security measures in place to protect the driving systems of its cars against cyber attacks, a team of security researchers discovered a way to remotely hack a Tesla Model S luxury sedans in less than two seconds. Yes, you heard that right. A team of researchers from the Computer Security and Industrial Cryptography (COSIC) group of the Department of Electrical Engineering at the KU Leuven University in Belgium has demonstrated how it break the encryption used in Tesla's Model S wireless key fob. With $600 in radio and computing equipment that wirelessly read signals from a nearby Tesla owner's fob, the team was able to clone the key fob of Tesla's Model S, open the doors and drive away the electric sports car without a trace, according to Wired . "Today it's very easy for us to clone these key fobs in a matter of seconds," Lennert Wouters, one of the KU Leuven researchers, told Wired. "We can completely impersonate the key fob

A security researcher has discovered a serious vulnerability that could allow attackers to spoof website addresses in the Microsoft Edge web browser for Windows and Apple Safari for iOS. While Microsoft fixed the address bar URL spoofing vulnerability last month as part of its monthly security updates , Safari is still unpatched, potentially leaving Apple users vulnerable to phishing attacks. The phishing attacks today are sophisticated and increasingly more difficult to spot, and this newly discovered vulnerability takes it to another level that can bypass basic indicators like URL and SSL, which are the first things a user checks to determine if a website is fake. Discovered by Pakistan-based security researcher Rafay Baloch, the vulnerability (CVE-2018-8383) is due to a race condition type issue caused by the web browser allowing JavaScript to update the page address in the URL bar while the page is loading. Here's How the URL Spoofing Vulnerability Works Successfu

Adobe has released September 2018 security patch updates for a total of 10 vulnerabilities in Flash Player and ColdFusion, six of which are rated as critical that affected ColdFusion and could allow attackers to remotely execute arbitrary code on a vulnerable server. What's the good news this month for Adobe users? This month Adobe Acrobat and Reader applications did not receive any patch update, while Adobe Flash Player has received an update for just a single privilege escalation vulnerability (CVE-2018-15967) rated as important. Secondly, Adobe said none of the security vulnerabilities patched this month were either publicly disclosed or found being actively exploited in the wild. Total 9 Security Patches for Adobe ColdFusion Adobe has addressed a total of nine security vulnerabilities in its ColdFusion web application development platform, six of which are critical, two important and one moderate. According to the advisory released by Adobe, ColdFusion contain

Zerodium, the infamous exploit vendor that earlier this year offered $1 million for submitting a zero-day exploit for Tor Browser , today publicly revealed a critical zero-day flaw in the anonymous browsing software that could reveal your identity to the sites you visit. In a Tweet, Zerodium shared a zero-day vulnerability that resides in the NoScript browser plugin comes pre-installed with the Mozilla Firefox bundled in the Tor software. NoScript is a free browser extension that blocks malicious JavaScript, Java, Flash and other potentially dangerous content on all web pages by default, though users can whitelist sites they trust. According to Zerodium, NoScript "Classic" versions 5.0.4 to 5.1.8.6--with 'Safest' security level enabled--included in Tor Browser 7.5.6 can be bypassed to run any JavaScript file by changing its content-type header to JSON format. In other words, a website can exploit this vulnerability to execute malicious JavaScript on victim

Cisco today released thirty security patch advisory to address a total of 32 security vulnerabilities in its products, three of which are rated critical, including the recently disclosed Apache Struts remote code execution vulnerability that is being exploited in the wild. Out of the rest 29 vulnerabilities, fourteen are rated high and 15 medium in severity, addressing security flaws in Cisco Routers, Cisco Webex, Cisco Umbrella, Cisco SD-WAN Solution, Cisco Cloud Services Platform, Cisco Data Center Network, and more products. The three critical security vulnerabilities patched by Cisco address issues in Apache Struts, Cisco Umbrella API, and Cisco RV110W, RV130W and RV215W router's management interface. Apache Struts Remote Code Execution Vulnerability (CVE-2018-11776) The vulnerability, reported late last month by Semmle security researcher Man Yue Mo, resides in the core of Apache Struts and originates due to insufficient validation of user-provided untrusted inputs in

A security researcher has publicly disclosed the details of a previously unknown zero-day vulnerability in the Microsoft's Windows operating system that could help a local user or malicious program obtain system privileges on the targeted machine. And guess what? The zero-day flaw has been confirmed working on a "fully-patched 64-bit Windows 10 system." The vulnerability is a privilege escalation issue which resides in the Windows' task scheduler program and occured due to errors in the handling of Advanced Local Procedure Call (ALPC) systems. Advanced local procedure call (ALPC) is an internal mechanism, available only to Windows operating system components, that facilitates high-speed and secure data transfer between one or more processes in the user mode. The revelation of the Windows zero-day came earlier today from a Twitter user with online alias SandboxEscaper, who also posted a link to a Github page hosting a proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit for the