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Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed  two unpatched security vulnerabilities  in the open-source U-Boot boot loader. The issues, which were uncovered in the  IP defragmentation  algorithm implemented in U-Boot by NCC Group, could be abused to achieve arbitrary out-of-bounds write and denial-of-service (DoS). U-Boot is a  boot loader  used in Linux-based embedded systems such as ChromeOS as well as ebook readers such as Amazon Kindle and Kobo eReader. The issues are summarized below - CVE-2022-30790  (CVSS score: 9.6) - Hole Descriptor overwrite in U-Boot IP packet defragmentation leads to an arbitrary out-of-bounds write primitive. CVE-2022-30552  (CVSS score: 7.1) - Large buffer overflow leads to DoS in U-Boot IP packet defragmentation code It's worth noting that both the flaws are exploitable only from the local network. But doing so can enable an attacker to root the devices and lead to a DoS by crafting a malformed packet. The shortcomings are expected to be addr

A team of cybersecurity researchers today disclosed details of a new high-risk vulnerability affecting billions of devices worldwide—including servers and workstations, laptops, desktops, and IoT systems running nearly any Linux distribution or Windows system. Dubbed ' BootHole ' and tracked as CVE-2020-10713 , the reported vulnerability resides in the GRUB2 bootloader, which, if exploited, could potentially let attackers bypass the Secure Boot feature and gain high-privileged persistent and stealthy access to the targeted systems. Secure Boot is a security feature of the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) that uses a bootloader to load critical components, peripherals, and the operating system while ensuring that only cryptographically signed code executes during the boot process. "One of the explicit design goals of Secure Boot is to prevent unauthorized code, even running with administrator privileges, from gaining additional privileges and pre-OS pers

Account takeover attacks have emerged as one of the most persistent and damaging threats to cloud-based SaaS environments. Yet despite significant investments in traditional security measures, many organizations continue to struggle with preventing these attacks. A new report, " Why Account Takeover Attacks Still Succeed, and Why the Browser is Your Secret Weapon in Stopping Them " argues that the browser is the primary battleground where account takeover attacks unfold and, thus, where they should be neutralized. The report also provides effective guidance for mitigating the account takeover risk.  Below are some of the key points raised in the report: The Role of the Browser in Account Takeovers According to the report, the SaaS kill chain takes advantage of the fundamental components that are contained within the browser. For account takeover, these include: Executed Web Pages - Attackers can create phishing login pages or use MiTM over legitimate web pages to harve

Security researchers have discovered several severe zero-day vulnerabilities in the mobile bootloaders from at least four popular device manufacturers that could allow an attacker to gain persistent root access on the device. A team of nine security researchers from the University of California Santa Barbara created a special static binary tool called BootStomp that automatically detects security vulnerabilities in bootloaders. Since bootloaders are usually closed source and hard to reverse-engineer, performing analysis on them is difficult, especially because hardware dependencies hinder dynamic analysis. Therefore, the researchers created BootStomp, which "uses a novel combination of static analysis techniques and underconstrained symbolic execution to build a multi-tag taint analysis capable of identifying bootloader vulnerabilities." The tool helped the researchers discover six previously-unknown critical security bugs across bootloaders from HiSilicon (Huawe