Zero-Day Vulnerability | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Microsoft today issued an out-of-band security update to patch a critical zero-day vulnerability in Internet Explorer (IE) Web browser that attackers are already exploiting in the wild to hack into Windows computers. Discovered by security researcher Clement Lecigne of Google's Threat Analysis Group, the vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2018-8653, is a remote code execution (RCE) flaw in the IE browser's scripting engine. According to the advisory, an unspecified memory corruption vulnerability resides in the scripting engine JScript component of Microsoft Internet Explorer that handles execution of scripting languages. If exploited successfully, the vulnerability could allow attackers to execute arbitrary code in the context of the current user. "If the current user is logged on with administrative user rights, an attacker who successfully exploited the vulnerability could take control of an affected system. An attacker could then install programs; view, change,

Microsoft today, on its year-end December Patch Tuesday, released security updates to patch a total 39 vulnerabilities its Windows operating systems and applications—10 of which are rated as critical and other important in severity. One of the security vulnerabilities patched by the tech giant this month is listed as publicly known at the time of release, and one is a zero-day reported as being actively exploited in the wild by multiple hacking groups, including FruityArmor and SandCat APTs. Discovered and reported by security researchers at Kaspersky, the zero-day attack exploits an elevation-of-privilege (EoP) bug in the Windows Kernel (ntoskrnl.exe) that could allow malicious programs to execute arbitrary code with higher privileges on the targeted systems. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2018-8611  and classified important in severity, resides in the Kernel Transaction Manager, which occurs due to improper processing of transacted file operations in kernel mode. The flaw

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

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new zero-day vulnerability in Adobe Flash Player that hackers are actively exploiting in the wild as part of a targeted campaign appears to be attacking a Russian state health care institution. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2018-15982 , is a use-after-free flaw resides in Flash Player that, if exploited successfully, allows an attacker to execute arbitrary code on the targeted computer and eventually gain full control over the system. The newly discovered Flash Player zero-day exploit was spotted last week by researchers inside malicious Microsoft Office documents, which were submitted to online multi-engine malware scanning service VirusTotal from a Ukrainian IP address. The maliciously crafted Microsoft Office documents contain an embedded Flash Active X control in its header that renders when the targeted user opens it, causing exploitation of the reported Flash player vulnerability. According to cybersecurity researchers, neit

At Pwn2Own 2018 mobile hacking competition held in Tokyo on November 13-14, white hat hackers once again demonstrated that even the fully patched smartphones running the latest version of software from popular smartphone manufacturers can be hacked. Three major flagship smartphones—iPhone X, Samsung Galaxy S9, and Xiaomi Mi6—were among the devices that successfully got hacked at the annual mobile hacking contest organized by Trend Micro's Zero Day Initiative (ZDI), earning white hat hackers a total of $325,000 in reward. Teams of hackers participated from different countries or representing different cybersecurity companies disclosed a total of 18 zero-day vulnerabilities in mobile devices made by Apple, Samsung, and Xiaomi, as well as crafted exploits that allowed them to completely take over the targeted devices. Apple iPhone X Running iOS 12.1 — GOT HACKED! A team of two researchers, Richard Zhu and Amat Cama, who named themselves Fluoroacetate, discovered and managed to

It's Patch Tuesday once again…time for another round of security updates for the Windows operating system and other Microsoft products. This month Windows users and system administrators need to immediately take care of a total of 63 security vulnerabilities, of which 12 are rated critical, 49 important and one moderate and one low in severity. Two of the vulnerabilities patched by the tech giant this month are listed as publicly known at the time of release, and one flaw is reported as being actively exploited in the wild by multiple cybercriminal groups. Zero-Day Vulnerability Being Exploited by Cyber Criminals The zero-day vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2018-8589 , which is being exploited in the wild by multiple advanced persistent threat groups was first spotted and reported by security researchers from Kaspersky Labs. The flaw resides in the Win32k component (win32k.sys), which if exploited successfully, could allow a malicious program to execute arbitrary code

An independent exploit developer and vulnerability researcher has publicly disclosed a zero-day vulnerability in VirtualBox —a popular open source virtualization software developed by Oracle—that could allow a malicious program to escape virtual machine (guest OS) and execute code on the operating system of the host machine. The vulnerability occurs due to memory corruption issues and affects Intel PRO / 1000 MT Desktop (82540EM) network card (E1000) when the network mode is set to NAT (Network Address Translation). The flaw is independent of the type of operating system being used by the virtual and host machines because it resides in a shared code base. VirtualBox Zero-Day Exploit and Demo Video Released Sergey Zelenyuk published Wednesday a detailed technical explanation of the zero-day flaw on GitHub, which affects all current versions (5.2.20 and prior) of VirtualBox software and is present on the default Virtual Machine (VM) configuration. According to Zelenyuk, t

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

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

If you have already uninstalled Flash player, well done! But if you haven't, here's another great reason for ditching it. Adobe has released a security patch update for a critical vulnerability in its Flash Player software that is actively being exploited in the wild by hackers in targeted attacks against Windows users. Independently discovered last week by several security firms—including ICEBRG ,  Qihoo 360  and Tencent—the Adobe Flash player zero-day attacks have primarily been targeting users in the Middle East using a specially crafted Excel spreadsheet. "The hackers carefully constructed an Office document that remotely loaded Flash vulnerability. When the document was opened, all the exploit code and malicious payload were delivered through remote servers," Qihoo 360 published vulnerability analysis in a blog post. The stack-based buffer overflow vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2018-5002, impacts Adobe Flash Player 29.0.0.171 and earlier versions on

If you think that only CPU updates that address this year's major security flaws— Meltdown and Spectre —are the only ones you are advised to grab immediately, there are a handful of major security flaws that you should pay attention to. Microsoft has issued its first Patch Tuesday for 2018 to address 56 CVE-listed flaws, including a zero-day vulnerability in MS Office related that had been actively exploited by several threat groups in the wild. Sixteen of the security updates are listed as critical, 38 are rated important, one is rated moderate, and one is rated as low in severity. The updates address security flaws in Windows, Office, Internet Explorer, Edge, ChakraCore, ASP.NET, and the .NET Framework. The zero-day vulnerability ( CVE-2018-0802 ), described by Microsoft as a memory corruption flaw in Office, is already being targeted in the wild by several threat actor groups in the past few months. The vulnerability, discovered by several researchers from Chinese com

Security researchers have publicly disclosed an unpatched zero-day vulnerability in the firmware of AT&T DirecTV WVB kit after trying to get the device manufacturer to patch this easy-to-exploit flaw over the past few months. The problem is with a core component of the Genie DVR system that's shipped free of cost with DirecTV and can be easily exploited by hackers to gain root access and take full control of the device, placing millions of people who've signed up to DirecTV service at risk. The vulnerability actually resides in WVBR0-25 —a Linux-powered wireless video bridge manufactured by Linksys that AT&T provides to its new customers. DirecTV Wireless Video Bridge WVBR0-25 allows the main Genie DVR to communicate over the air with customers' Genie client boxes (up to 8) that are plugged into their TVs around the home. Trend Micro researcher Ricky Lawshae, who is also a DirecTV customer, decided to take a closer look at the device and found that Linksy

FinSpy —the infamous surveillance malware is back and infecting high-profile targets using a new Adobe Flash zero-day exploit delivered through Microsoft Office documents. Security researchers from Kaspersky Labs have discovered a new zero-day remote code execution vulnerability in Adobe Flash, which was being actively exploited in the wild by a group of advanced persistent threat actors, known as BlackOasis . The critical type confusion vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2017-11292 , could lead to code execution and affects Flash Player 21.0.0.226 for major operating systems including Windows, Macintosh, Linux and Chrome OS. Researchers say BlackOasis is the same group of attackers which were also responsible for exploiting another zero-day vulnerability ( CVE-2017-8759 ) discovered by FireEye researchers in September 2017. Also, the final FinSpy payload in the current attacks exploiting Flash zero-day (CVE-2017-11292) shares the same command and control (C&C) server as the

As part of its "October Patch Tuesday," Microsoft has today released a large batch of security updates to patch a total of 62 vulnerabilities in its products, including a severe MS office zero-day flaw that has been exploited in the wild. Security updates also include patches for Microsoft Windows operating systems, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge, Skype, Microsoft Lync and Microsoft SharePoint Server. Besides the MS Office vulnerability, the company has also addressed two other publicly disclosed (but not yet targeted in the wild) vulnerabilities that affect the SharePoint Server and the Windows Subsystem for Linux. October patch Tuesday also fixes a critical Windows DNS vulnerability that could be exploited by a malicious DNS server to execute arbitrary code on the targeted system. Below you can find a brief technical explanation of all above mentioned critical and important vulnerabilities. Microsoft Office Memory Corruption Vulnerability (CVE-2017-11826) T

Get ready to install a fairly large batch of security patches onto your Windows computers. As part of its September Patch Tuesday , Microsoft has released a large batch of security updates to patch a total of 81 CVE-listed vulnerabilities, on all supported versions of Windows and other MS products. The latest security update addresses 27 critical and 54 important vulnerabilities in severity, of which 38 vulnerabilities are impacting Windows, 39 could lead to Remote Code Execution (RCE). Affected Microsoft products include: Internet Explorer Microsoft Edge Microsoft Windows .NET Framework Skype for Business and Lync Microsoft Exchange Server Microsoft Office, Services and Web Apps Adobe Flash Player .NET 0-Day Flaw Under Active Attack According to the company, four of the patched vulnerabilities are publicly known, one of which has already been actively exploited by the attackers in the wild. Here's the list of publically known flaws and their impact: W

It seems Microsoft is planning to build its EMET anti-exploit tool into the kernel of Windows 10 Creator Update (also known as RedStone 3), which is expected to release in September/October 2017. So you may not have to separately download and install EMET in the upcoming version of the Windows 10. If true, this would be the second big change Microsoft is making in its Windows 10 Fall update after planning to remove SMBv1 to enhance its users security. EMET or Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit, currently optional, is a free anti-exploit toolkit for Microsoft's Windows operating systems designed to boost the security of your computer against complex threats such as zero-day vulnerabilities. " EMET helps protect your computer systems even before new and undiscovered threats are formally addressed by security updates and antimalware software ," Microsoft site reads. Basically EMET detects and prevents buffer overflows and memory corruption vulnerabilities,

Did you know… last month's widespread WannaCry ransomware attack forced Microsoft to release security updates against EternalBlue SMB exploit for unsupported versions of Windows, but the company left other three Windows zero-day exploits unpatched? For those unaware, EternalBlue is a Windows SMB flaw that was leaked by the Shadow Brokers in April and then abused by the WannaCry ransomware to infect nearly 300,000 computers in more than 150 countries within just 72 hours on 12th of May. Shortly after WannaCry outbreak, we reported that three unpatched Windows exploits , codenamed " EsteemAudit, " " ExplodingCan ," and " EnglishmanDentist ," were also being exploited by individuals and state-sponsored hackers in the wild. Specially EsteemAudit , one of the dangerous Windows hacking tool that targets remote desktop protocol (RDP) service on Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP machines, while ExplodingCan exploits bugs in IIS 6.0 and E