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KILLER! Unpatched WinRAR Vulnerability Puts 500 Million Users At Risk

KILLER! Unpatched WinRAR Vulnerability Puts 500 Million Users At Risk
Sep 30, 2015
Beware Windows Users! A new dangerous unpatched Zero-day Vulnerability has been detected in the latest version of WinRAR affects over millions of users worldwide. According to Mohammad Reza Espargham , a security researcher at Vulnerability-Lab , the stable version of WinRAR 5.21 for Windows computers is vulnerable to Remote Code Execution (RCE) flaw. WinRAR is one of the most popular utility program used to compress and decompress files with more than 500 Million installations worldwide. The WinRAR RCE vulnerability lie under the ' High Severity ' block, and scores 9 on CVSS ( Common Vulnerability Scoring System ). HOW WINRAR VULNERABILITY WORKS? Let's take a look at its actions. The vulnerability can be used by any attacker smartly to insert a malicious HTML code inside the " Text to display in SFX window " section when the user is creating a new SFX file. WinRAR SFX is an executable compressed file type containing one or more file

New Android Vulnerability Could Crash your Phones Badly

New Android Vulnerability Could Crash your Phones Badly
Jul 30, 2015
Bad week for Android. Just days after a critical Stagefright vulnerability was revealed in the widely popular mobile platform, another new vulnerability threatens to make most Android devices unresponsive and practically unusable to essential tasks. Security researchers at Trend Micro have developed an attack technique that could ultimately crash more than 55 percent of Android phones , almost making them completely unresponsive and useless to perform very basic functions, including to make or receive calls. The dangerous security flaw affects any device running Android 4.3 Jelly Bean and later, including the latest Android 5.1.1 Lollipop , potentially putting hundreds of millions of Android users vulnerable to hackers. The flaw surfaced two days after Zimperium researchers warned that nearly 950 Million Android phones can be hijacked by sending a simple text message. Dubbed Stagefright , the vulnerability is more serious because it required no end-user interaction at

How to Accelerate Vendor Risk Assessments in the Age of SaaS Sprawl

How to Accelerate Vendor Risk Assessments in the Age of SaaS Sprawl
Mar 21, 2024SaaS Security / Endpoint Security
In today's digital-first business environment dominated by SaaS applications, organizations increasingly depend on third-party vendors for essential cloud services and software solutions. As more vendors and services are added to the mix, the complexity and potential vulnerabilities within the  SaaS supply chain  snowball quickly. That's why effective vendor risk management (VRM) is a critical strategy in identifying, assessing, and mitigating risks to protect organizational assets and data integrity. Meanwhile, common approaches to vendor risk assessments are too slow and static for the modern world of SaaS. Most organizations have simply adapted their legacy evaluation techniques for on-premise software to apply to SaaS providers. This not only creates massive bottlenecks, but also causes organizations to inadvertently accept far too much risk. To effectively adapt to the realities of modern work, two major aspects need to change: the timeline of initial assessment must shorte

Apple Mac OS X Vulnerability Allows Attackers to Hack your Computer

Apple Mac OS X Vulnerability Allows Attackers to Hack your Computer
Jul 23, 2015
A security researcher has discovered a critical vulnerability in the latest version of Apple's OS X Yosemite  that could allow anyone to obtain unrestricted root user privileges with the help of code that fits in a tweet. The privilege-escalation vulnerability initially reported on Tuesday by German researcher Stefan Esser , could be exploited by to circumvent security protections and gain full control of Mac computers. The most worrying part is that this critical vulnerability is yet to be fixed by Apple in the latest release of its operating system. This could make it easier for hackers to surreptitiously infect Macs with rootkits and other types of persistent malware. Thanks to an environment variable DYLD_PRINT_TO_FILE Apple added to the code of OS X 10.10 Yosemite. Apple Mac OS X Vulnerability Gives Full Control of your Mac This environment variable specifies where in the file system an operating system component called the OS X dynamic linker dyld

Automated remediation solutions are crucial for security

cyber security
websiteWing SecurityShadow IT / SaaS Security
Especially when it comes to securing employees' SaaS usage, don't settle for a longer to-do list. Auto-remediation is key to achieving SaaS security.

Seagate NAS Zero-Day Vulnerability allows Unauthorized Root Access Remotely

Seagate NAS Zero-Day Vulnerability allows Unauthorized Root Access Remotely
Mar 01, 2015
Seagate , a popular vendor of hardware solutions, has a critical zero-day vulnerability in its Network Attached Storage (NAS) device software that possibly left thousands of its users vulnerable to hackers. Seagate's Business Storage 2-Bay NAS product , found in home and business networks, is vulnerable to a zero-day Remote Code Execution vulnerability, currently affecting more than 2,500 publicly exposed devices on the Internet. Seagate is one of the world's largest vendor of hardware solutions, with products available worldwide. After Western Digital, Seagate ranked second and holds 41% of the market worldwide in supplying storage hardware products. A security researcher, named OJ Reeves , discovered the zero-day remote code execution vulnerability on 7th October last year and, reported to the company totally in the white hat style. But even after 130 days of responsible disclosure, the zero-day bug remains unpatched till now. In order to exploit the vulnerability, an atta

Crashing Google Email App for Android Just By Sending a Malicious Email

Crashing Google Email App for Android Just By Sending a Malicious Email
Feb 18, 2015
A vulnerability has been discovered in the wildly popular Google's Stock Android Email App , that could be exploited by malicious attackers to remotely crash your smartphone application just by sending a specially crafted email. A Spain security researcher, Hector Marco , successfully exploited the vulnerability on his Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini running version 4.2.2.0200 of Stock Android Email App. He said the flaw appears to affect all older versions of Stock Android Email App, though devices running 4.2.2.0400 and newer versions are not affected. According to the researcher, when the victim receives the malicious email and tries to view it, the email app crashes. Further attempts to open the email again triggers a crash in the application before the victim can do anything. The flaw ( CVE-2015-1574 ) is due to incorrect handling of the Content-Disposition header . Hackers could exploit the vulnerability by sending an email with a malformed Content-Disposition header to th

Google Researcher Reveals Zero-Day Windows 8.1 Vulnerability

Google Researcher Reveals Zero-Day Windows 8.1 Vulnerability
Jan 02, 2015
A Google security researcher, ' James Forshaw ' has discovered a privilege escalation vulnerability in Windows 8.1 that could allow a hacker to modify contents or even to take over victims' computers completely, leaving millions of users vulnerable. The researcher also provided a Proof of Concept (PoC) program for the vulnerability. Forshaw says that he has tested the PoC only on an updated Windows 8.1 and that it is unclear whether earlier versions, specifically Windows 7, are vulnerable. Forshaw unearthed the bug in September 2014 and thereby notified on the Google Security Research mailing list about the bug on 30th September. Now, after 90 days disclosure deadline the vulnerability and Proof of Concept program was made public on Wednesday. The vulnerability resides in the function AhcVerifyAdminContext , an internal function and not a public API which actually checks whether the user is an administrator. "This function has a vulnerability where i

New Android Browser Vulnerability Is a "Privacy Disaster" for 70% Of Android Users

New Android Browser Vulnerability Is a “Privacy Disaster” for 70% Of Android Users
Sep 17, 2014
A Serious vulnerability has been discovered in the Web browser installed by default on a large number (Approximately 70%) of Android devices, that could allow an attacker to hijack users' open websites, and there is now a Metasploit module available to easily exploit this dangerous flaw. The exploit targets vulnerability ( CVE-2014-6041 ) in Android versions 4.2.1 and all older versions and was first disclosed right at the start of September by an independent security researcher Rafay Baloch, but there has not been much public discussion on it. The Android bug has been called a " privacy disaster " by Tod Beardsley, a developer for the Metasploit security toolkit, and in order to explain you why, he has promised to post a video that is " sufficiently shocking ." " By malforming a javascript: URL handler with a prepended null byte, the AOSP, or Android Open Source Platform (AOSP) Browser) fails to enforce the Same-Origin Policy (SOP) browser secur

Flickr Cross-Site Request Forgery Vulnerability Patched

Flickr Cross-Site Request Forgery Vulnerability Patched
Aug 06, 2014
Yahoo-owned Flickr, one of the biggest online photo management and sharing website in the world was recently impacted by a web application vulnerability , which could allow an attacker to modify users' profile image. Flickr is one of the most popular photo sharing website with more than 87 million users, therefore some top major target for cybercriminals. The site was vulnerable to the most common vulnerability known as Cross-Site Request Forgery (XSRF or CSRF), which is very easy to exploit by attackers. Cross-Site Request Forgery is a method of attacking a Web site in which an intruder masquerades as a legitimate and trusted user. All the attacker need to do is get the target browser to make a request to your website on their behalf. If they can either: Convince your users to click on a HTML page they've constructed Insert arbitrary HTML in a target website that your users visit Not too difficult, is it? Abdullah Hussam , a 17 years old programmer from Iraq found that just

Attackers Compromise TOR Network to De-Anonymize Users of Hidden Services

Attackers Compromise TOR Network to De-Anonymize Users of Hidden Services
Jul 30, 2014
A critical vulnerability in Tor — an encrypted anonymizing network considered to be one of the most privacy oriented service, which is used by online users in order to hide their activities from law enforcement, government censors and others — was probably being used to de-anonymize the identity of Tor users, Tor project warned on Wednesday. 115 MALICIOUS ToR RELAYS WERE DE-ANONYMIZING USERS According to a security advisory , Tor Team has found a group of 115 malicious fast non-exit relays (6.4% of whole Tor network), those were actively monitoring the relays on both ends of a Tor circuit in an effort to de-anonymize users. " While we don't know when they started doing the attack, users who operated or accessed hidden services from early February through July 4 should assume they were affected, " Tor said. When you use Tor anonymizing network, your IP address remains hidden and it appears that your connection is coming from the IP address of a Tor exit rela

Exploit-Selling Firm Kept Internet Explorer Zero-Day Vulnerability Hidden for 3 Years

Exploit-Selling Firm Kept Internet Explorer Zero-Day Vulnerability Hidden for 3 Years
Jul 24, 2014
A French information security company VUPEN has recently disclosed that it held onto a serious Internet Explorer (IE) vulnerability for at least three years before revealing it at the Pwn2Own hacker competition held in March this year. The critical zero-day vulnerability affected versions 8, 9, 10 and 11 of Internet Explorer browser that allowed attackers to remotely bypass the IE Protected Mode sandbox. An attacker can exploit this issue to gain elevated privileges. VULNERABILITY DISCLOSURE TIMELINE According to a disclosure made by the security company last week, the vulnerability with ID  CVE-2014-2777  was discovered by the company on 12 February 2011, which was  patched by Microsoft  last month. 12 February 2011 - IE Zero-day discovered by Vupen. 13 March 2014 - Vupen reported to Microsoft. 11 June 2014 - Microsoft Released patch and publicly released the advisory . Sandbox is security mechanism used to run an application in a restricted environment. If an attacker is ab

Disqus Wordpress Plugin Flaw Leaves Millions of Blogs Vulnerable to Hackers

Disqus Wordpress Plugin Flaw Leaves Millions of Blogs Vulnerable to Hackers
Jun 30, 2014
A Remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability has been discovered in the comment and discussion service, Disqus plugin for the most popular Blogging Platform Wordpress . While there are more than 70 million websites on the Internet currently running WordPress, about 1.3 million of them use the ' Disqus Comment System ' Plugin, making it one of the popular plugins of Wordpress for web comments and discussions. The security team at the security firm Sucuri discovered a critical Remote Code Execution (RCE) flaw while analyzing some custom JSON parser of the Disqus plugin and found that the variable parsing function could allow anyone to execute commands on the server using insecurely coded PHP eval() function. WHO ARE VULNERABLE The Remote Code Execution ( RCE ) Vulnerability could be triggered by a remote attacker, only if it is using following application versions on the server/website. PHP version 5.1.6 or earlier WordPress 3.1.4 or earlier Wordpress Plugin

20-Year Old Vulnerability in LZO Compression Algorithm Went to Planet Mars

20-Year Old Vulnerability in LZO Compression Algorithm Went to Planet Mars
Jun 27, 2014
A 20 year old critical subtle integer overflow vulnerability has been discovered in Lempel-Ziv-Oberhumer (LZO), an extremely efficient data compression algorithm that focuses on decompression speed, which is almost five times faster than zlib and bzip compression algorithms. Lempel-Ziv-Oberhumer (LZO) was developed in 1994 by Markus Oberhumer and currently it is one of the most popular and widespread compression algorithm used in the Linux kernel , some Samsung Android mobile devices, other embedded devices and several open-source libraries including OpenVPN, MPlayer2, Libav, FFmpeg. 20 YEAR OLD VULNERABILITY IN LZO ALGORITHM Don A. Bailey, founder and CEO of Lab Mouse Security, who disclosed the technical details of the buffer overrun vulnerability in LZO/LZ4 algorithm, explains that if an attacker carefully craft a piece of compressed data that would run malicious code when the software attempted to decompress it. According to advisory, if buffers of 16MB or more

Android 4.3 and Earlier versions Vulnerable to Critical Code-Execution Flaw

Android 4.3 and Earlier versions Vulnerable to Critical Code-Execution Flaw
Jun 27, 2014
A critical code-execution vulnerability almost affecting everyone those are not running the most updated version of Google Android , i.e. Android version 4.4 also known as KitKat. After nine months of vulnerability disclosure to the Android security team, researchers of the Application Security team at IBM have finally revealed all the possible details of a serious code-execution vulnerability that still affects the Android devices running versions 4.3 and earlier, which could allow attackers to exfiltrate sensitive information from the vulnerable devices. " Considering Android's fragmented nature and the fact that this was a code-execution vulnerability, we decided to wait a bit with the public disclosure ," said Roee Hay, a security research group leader at IBM. The researchers found the stack buffer overflow vulnerability that resides in the Android's KeyStore storage service, which according to the Android developers' website is the service code running in Androi

WordPress Cookie Flaw Lets Hackers Hijack Your Account

WordPress Cookie Flaw Lets Hackers Hijack Your Account
May 27, 2014
Do you own a blog on WordPress.com website? If Yes, then you should take some extra cautious while signing into your Wordpress account from the next time when connected to public Wi-Fi, because it can be hacked without your knowledge, even if you have enabled two-factor authentication. Yan Zhu , a researcher at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) noticed that the blogs hosted on WordPress are sending user authentication cookies in plain text, rather than encrypting it. So, it can be easily hijacked by even a Script-Kiddie looking to steal information. HIJACKING  AUTHENTICATION COOKIES When Wordpress users log into their account, WordPress.com servers set a web cookie with name " wordpress_logged_in " into the users' browser, Yan Zhu explained in a blog post. He noticed that this authentication cookie being sent over clear HTTP, in a very insecure manner. One can grab HTTP cookies from the same Wi-Fi Network by using some specialized tools, such as F

PREC Tool prevents Android Device from Root Exploit hidden in Malicious apps

PREC Tool prevents Android Device from Root Exploit hidden in Malicious apps
Mar 08, 2014
Smartphones are always ready to connect to the Internet and contains sensitive information such as Contacts, SMS, Photos, and GPS information and this sensitive information is always in danger of leakage. According to a report, Cyber criminals and state-sponsored hackers are developing 55,000 new malware variants, each and every day; and many of them try to elevate privileges for unfettered control of the user device. North Carolina State University Researchers have developed a new software, called Practical Root Exploit Containment ( PREC ) , with the sole purpose of detecting mobile malware that attempts to run Root exploits in Android devices. Root exploits take control of system administration functions of the operating system that gives the hacker an unrestricted control of user's Smartphone. That means, an application has not permission to read your messages or contacts or the GPS location, but after getting root access it will be able to steal any data from your d

Linksys Malware 'The Moon' Spreading from Router to Router

Linksys Malware 'The Moon' Spreading from Router to Router
Feb 17, 2014
Which Wireless Router do you have at your Home or Office? If it's a Linksys Router you could be in the danger to a new malware that attacks your firmware and replicates itself. Security researcher Johannes B. Ullrich from the SANS Technology Institute has warned about a self-replicating malware which is exploiting authentication bypass and code-execution vulnerabilities in the Linksys wireless routers. The Malware named as ' THE MOON ', scans for other vulnerable devices to spread from router to router and Johannes confirmed that the malicious worm has already infected around 1,000 Linksys E1000, E1200, and E2400 routers. In order to hack the Router, malware remotely calls the Home Network Administration Protocol (HNAP), allows identification, configuration and management of networking devices. The Malware first request the model and firmware version of the router using HNAP and if the device founds vulnerable, it sends a CGI script exploit to get the local command execution

Foursquare vulnerability that exposes 45 million users' email addresses

Foursquare vulnerability that exposes 45 million users' email addresses
Jan 28, 2014
A location based Social Networking platform with 45 million users,' Foursquare ' was vulnerable to the primary email address disclosed.  Foursquare is a Smartphone application that gives you details of nearby cafes, bars, shops, parks using GPS location and also tells about your friends nearby. According to a Penetration tester and hacker ' Jamal Eddin e ',  an attacker can extract email addresses of all 45 million users just by using a few lines of scripting tool. Basically the flaw exists in the Invitation system of the Foursquare app. While testing the app, he found that invitation received on the recipient's end actually disclosing the sender's email address, as shown above. Invitation URL:  https://foursquare.com/mehdi?action=acceptFriendship&expires=1378920415&src=wtbfe& uid = 64761059 &sig=mmlx96RwGrQ2fJAg4OWZhAWnDvc%3D Where 'uid' parameter represents the sender's profile ID.  Hacker noticed th

23-year-old Stack overflow vulnerability discovered in X11 Server

23-year-old Stack overflow vulnerability discovered in X11 Server
Jan 09, 2014
X.Org Foundation develops the X-Window System, the standard window system for open source operating systems and devices. Most of the graphical user interfaces for Unix and Linux systems rely on it. At the 30th Chaos Communication Congress (CCC) in Germany, Ilja van Sprundel , a security researcher gave the presentation titled  " X11 Server security with being 'worse than it looks.'". He found more than 120 bugs in a few months. In the presentation, he has presented a 23 year old Stack overflow vulnerability in X11 System that could lead to privilege escalation to root and affects all versions of the X Server back to X11R5. Later today, X.Org Foundation released a security Advisory , states " A BDF font file containing a longer than expected string could overflow the buffer on the stack. Testing in X servers built with Stack Protector resulted in an immediate crash when reading a user-provided specially crafted font. " The flaw resides in a file at " libXfo
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