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A suspected state-aligned threat actor has been attributed to a new set of attacks exploiting the Microsoft Office "Follina" vulnerability to target government entities in Europe and the U.S. Enterprise security firm Proofpoint said it blocked attempts at exploiting the remote code execution flaw, which is being tracked as  CVE-2022-30190  (CVSS score: 7.8). No less than 1,000 phishing messages containing a lure document were sent to the targets. "This campaign masqueraded as a salary increase and utilized an RTF with the exploit payload downloaded from 45.76.53[.]253," the company  said  in a series of tweets. The payload, which manifests in the form of a PowerShell script, is Base64-encoded and functions as a downloader to retrieve a second PowerShell script from a remote server named "seller-notification[.]live." "This script checks for virtualization, steals information from local browsers, mail clients and file services, conducts machine re

Atlassian on Friday rolled out fixes to address a  critical security flaw  affecting its Confluence Server and Data Center products that have come under active exploitation by threat actors to achieve remote code execution. Tracked as  CVE-2022-26134 , the issue is similar to  CVE-2021-26084  — another security flaw the Australian software company patched in August 2021. Both relate to a case of Object-Graph Navigation Language ( OGNL ) injection that could be exploited to achieve arbitrary code execution on a Confluence Server or Data Center instance. The newly discovered shortcoming impacts all supported versions of Confluence Server and Data Center, with every version after 1.3.0 also affected. It's been resolved in the following versions - 7.4.17 7.13.7 7.14.3 7.15.2 7.16.4 7.17.4 7.18.1 According to stats from internet asset discovery platform  Censys , there are about 9,325 services across 8,347 distinct hosts running a vulnerable version of Atlassian Confluenc

The introduction of Open AI's ChatGPT was a defining moment for the software industry, touching off a GenAI race with its November 2022 release. SaaS vendors are now rushing to upgrade tools with enhanced productivity capabilities that are driven by generative AI. Among a wide range of uses, GenAI tools make it easier for developers to build software, assist sales teams in mundane email writing, help marketers produce unique content at low cost, and enable teams and creatives to brainstorm new ideas.  Recent significant GenAI product launches include Microsoft 365 Copilot, GitHub Copilot, and Salesforce Einstein GPT. Notably, these GenAI tools from leading SaaS providers are paid enhancements, a clear sign that no SaaS provider will want to miss out on cashing in on the GenAI transformation. Google will soon launch its SGE "Search Generative Experience" platform for premium AI-generated summaries rather than a list of websites.  At this pace, it's just a matter of a short time befo

Atlassian has warned of a critical unpatched remote code execution vulnerability impacting Confluence Server and Data Center products that it said is being actively exploited in the wild. The Australian software company credited cybersecurity firm Volexity for identifying the flaw, which is being tracked as  CVE-2022-26134 . "Atlassian has been made aware of current active exploitation of a critical severity unauthenticated remote code execution vulnerability in Confluence Data Center and Server," it  said  in an advisory. "There are currently no fixed versions of Confluence Server and Data Center available. Atlassian is working with the highest priority to issue a fix." Specifics of the security flaw have been withheld until a software patch is available. All supported versions of Confluence Server and Data Center are affected, although it's expected that all versions of the enterprise solution are potentially vulnerable. The earliest impacted version is

A new unpatched security vulnerability has been disclosed in the open-source Horde Webmail client that could be exploited to achieve remote code execution on the email server simply by sending a specially crafted email to a victim. "Once the email is viewed, the attacker can silently take over the complete mail server without any further user interaction," SonarSource said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "The vulnerability exists in the default configuration and can be exploited with no knowledge of a targeted Horde instance." The issue, which has been assigned the CVE identifier  CVE-2022-30287 , was reported to the vendor on February 2, 2022. The maintainers of the Horde Project did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding the unresolved vulnerability. At its core, the issue makes it possible for an authenticated user of a Horde instance to run malicious code on the underlying server by taking advantage of a quirk in how the client

An advanced persistent threat (APT) actor aligned with Chinese state interests has been observed weaponizing the new  zero-day flaw  in Microsoft Office to achieve code execution on affected systems. "TA413 CN APT spotted [in-the-wild] exploiting the Follina zero-day using URLs to deliver ZIP archives which contain Word Documents that use the technique," enterprise security firm Proofpoint  said  in a tweet. "Campaigns impersonate the 'Women Empowerments Desk' of the Central Tibetan Administration and use the domain tibet-gov.web[.]app." TA413  is best known for its campaigns aimed at the Tibetan diaspora to deliver implants such as  Exile RAT  and  Sepulcher  as well as a rogue Firefox browser extension dubbed  FriarFox . The high-severity security flaw, dubbed Follina and tracked as CVE-2022-30190 (CVSS score: 7.8), relates to a case of remote code execution that abuses the "ms-msdt:" protocol URI scheme to execute arbitrary code. Specific

Cybersecurity researchers are calling attention to a zero-day flaw in Microsoft Office that could be abused to achieve arbitrary code execution on affected Windows systems. The vulnerability came to light after an independent cybersecurity research team known as nao_sec uncovered a Word document (" 05-2022-0438.doc ") that was uploaded to VirusTotal from an IP address in Belarus. "It uses Word's external link to load the HTML and then uses the 'ms-msdt' scheme to execute PowerShell code," the researchers  noted  in a series of tweets last week. According to security researcher Kevin Beaumont, who dubbed the flaw "Follina," the maldoc leverages Word's  remote template  feature to fetch an HTML file from a server, which then makes use of the "ms-msdt://" URI scheme to run the malicious payload. The shortcoming has been so named because the malicious sample references 0438, which is the area code of Follina, a municipality in t

Google Project Zero called 2021 a "record year for in-the-wild 0-days," as  58 security vulnerabilities  were detected and disclosed during the course of the year. The development marks more than a two-fold jump from the previous maximum when 28 0-day exploits were tracked in 2015. In contrast, only 25 0-day exploits were detected in 2020. "The large uptick in in-the-wild 0-days in 2021 is due to increased detection and disclosure of these 0-days, rather than simply increased usage of 0-day exploits," Google Project Zero security researcher  Maddie Stone   said . "Attackers are having success using the same bug patterns and exploitation techniques and going after the same attack surfaces," Stone added. The tech giant's in-house security team characterized the exploits as similar to previous and publicly known vulnerabilities, with only two of them markedly different for the technical sophistication and use of logic bugs to escape the sandbox. B

Google on Friday shipped an out-of-band security update to address a high severity vulnerability in its Chrome browser that it said is being actively exploited in the wild. Tracked as  CVE-2022-1096 , the zero-day flaw relates to a type confusion vulnerability in the V8 JavaScript engine. An anonymous researcher has been credited with reporting the bug on March 23, 2022. Type confusion errors, which arise when a resource (e.g., a variable or an object) is accessed using a type that's incompatible to what was originally initialized, could have serious consequences in languages that are not  memory safe  like C and C++, enabling a malicious actor to perform out-of-bounds memory access. "When a memory buffer is accessed using the wrong type, it could read or write memory out of the bounds of the buffer, if the allocated buffer is smaller than the type that the code is attempting to access, leading to a crash and possibly code execution," MITRE's Common Weakness Enum

Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG) on Thursday disclosed that it acted to mitigate threats from two distinct government-backed attacker groups based in North Korea that exploited a recently-uncovered remote code execution flaw in the Chrome web browser. The campaigns, once again "reflective of the regime's immediate concerns and priorities," are said to have targeted U.S. based organizations spanning news media, IT, cryptocurrency, and fintech industries, with one set of the activities sharing direct infrastructure overlaps with previous attacks  aimed at security researchers  last year. The shortcoming in question is  CVE-2022-0609 , a use-after-free vulnerability in the browser's Animation component that Google addressed as part of updates (version 98.0.4758.102) issued on February 14, 2022. It's also the first zero-day flaw patched by the tech giant since the start of 2022. "The earliest evidence we have of this exploit kit being actively deploy

Mozilla has pushed out-of-band  software updates  to its Firefox web browser to contain two high-impact security vulnerabilities, both of which it says are being actively exploited in the wild. Tracked as CVE-2022-26485 and CVE-2022-26486, the zero-day flaws have been described as  use-after-free issues  impacting the Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations ( XSLT ) parameter processing and the  WebGPU  inter-process communication ( IPC ) Framework. XSLT is an XML-based language used for the conversion of XML documents into web pages or PDF documents, whereas WebGPU is an emerging web standard that's been billed as a successor to the current WebGL JavaScript graphics library. The description of the two flaws is below – CVE-2022-26485  – Removing an XSLT parameter during processing could lead to an exploitable use-after-free CVE-2022-26486  – An unexpected message in the WebGPU IPC framework could lead to a use-after-free and exploitable sandbox escape Use-after-fre

Google on Monday rolled out fixes for eight security issues in the Chrome web browser, including a high-severity vulnerability that's being actively exploited in real-world attacks, marking the first zero-day patched by the internet giant in 2022. The shortcoming, tracked  CVE-2022-0609 , is described as a  use-after-free  vulnerability in the Animation component that, if successfully exploited, could lead to corruption of valid data and the execution of arbitrary code on affected systems. "Google is aware of reports that an exploit for CVE-2022-0609 exists in the wild," the company  said  in a characteristically brief statement acknowledging active exploitation of the flaw. Credited with discovering and reporting the flaw are Adam Weidemann and Clément Lecigne of Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG). Also addressed by Google four other use-after-free flaws impacting File Manager, Webstore API,  ANGLE , and GPU, a heap buffer overflow bug in Tab Groups, an inte

Apple on Thursday released security updates for  iOS, iPadOS ,  macOS , and  Safari  to address a new WebKit flaw that it said may have been actively exploited in the wild, making it the company's third zero-day patch since the start of the year. Tracked as CVE-2022-22620, the issue concerns a use-after-free vulnerability in the WebKit component that powers the Safari web browser and could be exploited by a piece of specially crafted web content to gain arbitrary code execution.  "Apple is aware of a report that this issue may have been actively exploited," the company said in a terse statement acknowledging in-the-wild attacks leveraging the flaw. The iPhone maker credited an anonymous researcher for discovering and reporting the flaw, adding it remediated the issue with improved memory management. The updates are available for iPhone 6s and later, iPad Pro (all models), iPad Air 2 and later, iPad 5th generation and later, iPad mini 4 and later, and iPod touch (7th

Users of the Argo continuous deployment (CD) tool for Kubernetes are being urged to push through updates after a zero-day vulnerability was found that could allow an attacker to extract sensitive information such as passwords and API keys. The flaw, tagged as  CVE-2022-24348  (CVSS score: 7.7), affects all versions and has been addressed in versions 2.3.0, 2.2.4, and 2.1.9. Cloud security firm Apiiro has been credited with discovering and reporting the bug on January 30, 2022s. Continuous deployment, also called continuous delivery, refers to a process that automatically deploys all code changes to the testing and/or production environment after they are tested and merged to a shared repository. Argo CD is officially used by  191 organizations , including Alibaba Group, BMW Group, Deloitte, Gojek, IBM, Intuit, LexisNexis, Red Hat, Skyscanner, Swisscom, and Ticketmaster. The path-traversal vulnerability "allows malicious actors to load a Kubernetes  Helm Chart YAML file  to t

Apple has sued NSO Group and its parent company Q Cyber Technologies in a U.S. federal court holding it accountable for illegally targeting users with its Pegasus surveillance tool, marking yet another setback for the Israeli spyware vendor. The Cupertino-based tech giant painted NSO Group as "notorious hackers — amoral 21st century mercenaries who have created highly sophisticated cyber-surveillance machinery that invites routine and flagrant abuse." In addition, the lawsuit seeks to permanently prevent the infamous hacker-for-hire company from breaking into any Apple software, services or devices. The iPhone maker, separately, also revealed its plans to  notify targets  of state-sponsored spyware attacks and has committed $10 million, as well as any monetary damages won as part of the lawsuit, to cybersurveillance research groups and advocates. To that end, the company intends to display a "Threat Notification" after the targeted users sign into appleid.apple[

Google has rolled out its monthly security patches for Android with fixes for 39 flaws, including a zero-day vulnerability that it said is being actively exploited in the wild in limited, targeted attacks. Tracked as CVE-2021-1048 , the zero-day bug is described as a  use-after-free vulnerability  in the kernel that can be exploited for local privilege escalation. Use-after-free issues are dangerous as it could enable a threat actor to access or referencing memory after it has been freed, leading to a " write-what-where " condition that results in the execution of arbitrary code to gain control over a victim's system. "There are indications that CVE-2021-1048 may be under limited, targeted exploitation," the company  noted  in its November advisory without revealing technical details of the vulnerability, the nature of the intrusions, and the identities of the attackers that may have abused the flaw. Also remediated in the security patch are two critical re

Google on Thursday rolled out an emergency update for its Chrome web browser, including fixes for two zero-day vulnerabilities that it says are being actively exploited in the wild. Tracked as  CVE-2021-38000  and  CVE-2021-38003 , the weaknesses relate to insufficient validation of untrusted input in a feature called Intents as well as a case of inappropriate implementation in V8 JavaScript and WebAssembly engine. The internet giant's Threat Analysis Group (TAG) has been credited with discovering and reporting the two flaws on September 15, 2021, and October 26, 2021, respectively. "Google is aware that exploits for CVE-2021-38000 and CVE-2021-38003 exist in the wild," the company  noted  in an advisory without delving into technical specifics about how the two vulnerabilities were used in attacks or the threat actors that may have weaponized them. Also addressed as part of this stable channel update is a  use-after-free  vulnerability in the Web Transport component

Microsoft on Tuesday warned of an actively exploited zero-day flaw impacting Internet Explorer that's being used to hijack vulnerable Windows systems by leveraging weaponized Office documents. Tracked as CVE-2021-40444 (CVSS score: 8.8), the remote code execution flaw is rooted in MSHTML (aka Trident), a proprietary browser engine for the now-discontinued Internet Explorer and which is used in Office to render web content inside Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents. "Microsoft is investigating reports of a remote code execution vulnerability in MSHTML that affects Microsoft Windows. Microsoft is aware of targeted attacks that attempt to exploit this vulnerability by using specially-crafted Microsoft Office documents," the company  said . "An attacker could craft a malicious ActiveX control to be used by a Microsoft Office document that hosts the browser rendering engine. The attacker would then have to convince the user to open the malicious document. Users who

The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) has issued new stricter vulnerability disclosure regulations that mandate software and networking vendors affected with critical flaws to mandatorily disclose them first-hand to the government authorities within two days of filing a report. The " Regulations on the Management of Network Product Security Vulnerability " are expected to go into effect starting September 1, 2021, and aim to standardize the discovery, reporting, repair, and release of security vulnerabilities and prevent security risks. "No organization or individual may take advantage of network product security vulnerabilities to engage in activities that endanger network security, and shall not illegally collect, sell or publish information on network product security vulnerabilities," Article 4 of the regulation states. In addition to banning sales of previously unknown security weaknesses, the new rules also forbid vulnerabilities from being disclos

Two of the zero-day Windows flaws rectified by Microsoft as part of its Patch Tuesday update earlier this week were weaponized by an Israel-based company called Candiru in a series of "precision attacks" to hack more than 100 journalists, academics, activists, and political dissidents globally. The spyware vendor was also formally identified as the commercial surveillance company that Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG) revealed as exploiting multiple zero-day vulnerabilities in Chrome browser to target victims located in Armenia, according to a report published by the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab. " Candiru 's apparent widespread presence, and the use of its surveillance technology against global civil society, is a potent reminder that the mercenary spyware industry contains many players and is prone to widespread abuse," Citizen Lab researchers  said . "This case demonstrates, yet again, that in the absence of any international safegua

Threat intelligence researchers from Google on Wednesday  shed more light  on four in-the-wild zero-days in Chrome, Safari, and Internet Explorer browsers that were exploited by malicious actors in different campaigns since the start of the year. What's more, three of the four zero-days were engineered by commercial providers and sold to and used by government-backed actors, contributing to an uptick in real-world attacks. The list of now-patched vulnerabilities is as follows - CVE-2021-1879 : Use-After-Free in QuickTimePluginReplacement (Apple WebKit) CVE-2021-21166 : Chrome Object Lifecycle Issue in Audio CVE-2021-30551 : Chrome Type Confusion in V8 CVE-2021-33742 : Internet Explorer out-of-bounds write in MSHTML Both Chrome zero-days — CVE-2021-21166 and CVE-2021-30551 — are believed to have been used by the same actor, and were delivered as one-time links sent via email to targets located in Armenia, with the links redirecting unsuspecting users to attacker-controlled