exploit | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Microsoft has issued a temporary fix for a 0day vulnerability that can be exploited to install malware via infected Word documents. A Zero-day Remote code execution flaw, which has been dubbed CVE-2013-3906 , exploits a vulnerability in a Microsoft graphics component, to target Microsoft Office users running Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. " The vulnerability is a remote code execution vulnerability that exists in the way affected components handle specially crafted TIFF images ," it said in the post .  Vulnerability was reported to Microsoft by McAfee Labs senior security researcher Haifei Li. A successful infection can give an attacker complete control over a system. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights. Currently the company is only aware of targeted attacks mostly in the Middle East and South Asia, with attackers sending unsuspecting v

We have discussed many times in our stories the network of Intelligent devices , their capabilities and the possibilities that cyber criminals could exploit them for illegal activities. Hidden chips are used by cyber criminals and state-sponsored hackers to infiltrate company networks and organizations for various purposes, to send out spam or for cyber espionage . The fact has happened in Russia, the State-owned channel Rossiya 24 has showed the images of an electric iron included in a batch of Chinese imports where the operators find a chip used for spying the environment surround. China is planting Microchips practically in every electrical device, as recently it has been discovered that the  electric iron  and kettles were modified with this technique to launch spam attacks. The Microchips were equipped with a little microphone and according to the correspondent the component were mostly being used to serve malware and the chips in fact are able to connect any co

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

Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) is a term referring to targeted attacks on enterprises and other organizations and recently referred to what appeared to be nation-state intelligence agencies using cyber assaults for both conventional espionage and industrial espionage. Advanced threats have targeted control systems in the past and these attacks use commercially available and custom-made advanced malware to steal information or perpetrate fraud. Terminator RAT has been used against Tibetan and Uyghur activists before and while tracking attack against entities in Taiwan, the Cyber Security company FireEye Labs recently analyzed some new samples of ' Terminator RAT ' (Remote Access Tool) that was sent via spear-phishing emails to targets in Taiwan. A word document as an attachment was sent to victims, exploited a vulnerability in Microsoft Office ( CVE-2012-0158 ), which subsequently drops a malware installer named " DW20.exe ". Sometimes the simplest techniques

If you are today trying to visit the php.net website, an official website of the PHP scripting language, you will likely see the above shown result, instead of the original website. Chrome and Firefox is currently flagging the site as " suspicious " and contains malware that can harm your computer. According to Google's Webmaster Tools, the script at https://static.php.net/www.php.net/userprefs.js  was included as suspicious, and Google's Safe Browsing diagnostics  for php.net do suggest that malware has been present on the site in the last 90 days: " Of the 1513 pages we tested on the site over the past 90 days, 4 page(s) resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent. " " Malicious software includes 4 trojan(s). Malicious software is hosted on 4 domain(s), including cobbcountybankruptcylawyer.com/, stephaniemari.com/, northgadui.com/ . 3 domain(s) appear to be functioning as intermediaries for

A Security researcher discovered a critical privacy vulnerability on Verizon Wireless's Web-based customer portal that allows anyone to download user's SMS History and Numbers of other users he communicated with. Back in August, researcher ' Cody Collier ' found that a simple URL exploit could allow any subscriber to extract data using ' Download to SpreadSheet' function. To exploit, an attacker only needs to modify the subscriber's phone number in the URL and this would give an attacker access to the SMS history to the targeted account. https://wbillpay.verizonwireless.com/vzw/accountholder/unbilledusage/UnbilledMessaging.action?d-455677-e=2&1548506v4671=1&mtn= 999999999 Where variable ' mtn ' within the URL defines the mobile number and an attacker just need to modify this. " Message details consist of: Date, Time, To, From, and Direction an SMS or MMS took place. With no user interaction, all that was required was a subscriber's phone nu

Address space layout randomization (ASLR) is a security technique involved in protection from buffer overflow attacks. Many recent APT (Advanced Persistent Threat) attacks have utilized many different ASLR bypass techniques during the past year, according to Researchers at  FireEye . Many exploits and malware attacks rely on the ability of the programmer to accurately identify where specific processes or system functions reside in memory. In order for an attacker to exploit or leverage a function, they must first be able to tell their code where to find the function or process to exploit.  The goal of ASLR  is to introduce randomness into addresses used by a given task. It involves randomly arranging the positions of key data areas of a program, including the base of the executable and the positions of the stack, heap, and libraries, in a process's address space.  Today a lot of attention is brought to client side exploits especially inside web browsers . Normally the e

A serious vulnerability in WhatsApp allows anyone who is able to eavesdrop on WhatsApp connection to decrypt users' messages. Whatsapp , the mobile application for instant messaging platform has become one of the main communication tools of the present day and its popularity makes it attractive for security researchers and hackers . This time it is debated in the protection of the messages exchanged through the application, thanks to a vulnerability in the crypto implementation they can be intercepted by an attacker. Thijs Alkemade is a computer science student at Utrecht University in The Netherlands who works on the open source Adium instant messaging project, during its research activity he disclosed a serious issue in the encryption used to secure WhatsApp messages. In the post titled " Piercing Through WhatsApp's Encryption " Alkemade remarked that Whatsapp has been plagued by numerous security issues recently, easily stolen passwords, unencr

According to a Security Analyst ' Maarten Boone ' working  at Fox-IT company, the Developer of notorious Blackhole Exploit Kit  developer ' Paunch ' and his partners were arrested in Russia recently. Blackhole Exploit Kit  which is responsible for the majority of web attacks today, is a crimeware that makes it simple for just about anyone to build a botnet . This Malware kit was developed by a hacker who uses the nickname "Paunch" and his Team, has gained wide adoption and is currently one of the most common exploit frameworks used for Web-based malware delivery. The Blackhole exploit kit is a framework for delivering exploits via compromised or third-party websites, serve up a range of old and new exploits for Oracle's Java, Adobe's Flash and other popular software to take control of victim's machines. It the point of writing No Police Authority or Press has confirmed the claim made by Maarten about the arrest of Malware author. Plea

A new Mac OS Malware has been discovered called OSX/Leverage . A , which appears to be yet another targeted command-and-control Trojan horse, that creates a backdoor on an affected user's machine. The Trojan named ' Leverage ' because the Trojan horse is distributed as an application disguised as a picture of two people kissing, possibly a scene from the television show " Leverage ". The attack launched via a Java applet from a compromised website and which drops a Java archive with the backdoor to the visitor's computer and launches it without a user intercation. To perform the attack, Malware uses two recently disclosed Java vulnerabilies  known as CVE-2013-2465 and CVE-2013-2471. Once it's installed, the Trojan connects to the C&C server on port 7777. Security vendor Intego said that Malware linked to Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) , because after installation Malware attempt to download an image associated with the Syrian Electronic A

The US government, particularly the National Security Agency  has been paying a French security firm for backdoors and zero day hacks. According to a contract newly released in response to a Freedom of Information request, last year the NSA purchased a 12-month subscription to a " binary analysis and exploits service " sold by Vupen, a zero-day Exploit Seller based in France. VUPEN is one of a handful of companies that sell software exploits and vulnerability details, who do original vulnerability research and develop exploits for bugs that they find. They Sold those exploits to the Governments and Law enforcement agencies. VUPEN has promised that the company only will sell its services to NATO countries and will not deal with oppressive regimes. It is unclear how much money the NSA spent on the Vupen exploits package because the cost has been redacted in the released contract. Last year, Vupen researchers successfully cracked Google's Chrome browser, but declined to

All supported versions of Internet Explorer are vulnerable to a zero-day Exploit that is currently being exploited in targeted attacks against IE 8 and IE 9, dubbed " CVE-2013-3893 MSHTML Shim Workaround ". Microsoft confirmed that the flaw was unknown before the attacks and that it is already working on an official patch, meantime Microsoft released an emergency software fix for Internet Explorer (IE) Web browser. Advisory noted that Microsoft is investigating public reports of a remote code execution vulnerability in Internet Explorer. This issue could allow remote code execution if an affected system browses to a website containing malicious content directed towards the specific browser type. Victims could be infected despite the adoption of all necessary countermeasures due the nature of the flaw previously unknown. The flaw that has been recently targeted by hackers during attacks is considerable serious and complicated to fix. State-sponsored hackin

WebView is an essential component in Android and iOS. It enables applications to display content from online resources and simplifies task of performing a network request, parsing the data and rendering it. Today AVG Security expert reported a critical vulnerability in Android's WebView feature that allows an attacker to install malicious software, send SMSs and performing more tasks. WebView uses a number of APIs which can interact with the web contents inside WebView. So this allows the user to view a web application as a part of an ordinary Android application. Users can be infected when they click on a URL link using a vulnerable application that allows opening a Java enabled browser or web page. The commands in the JavaScript code can enable attackers to install malicious software, send SMSs, steal personal information and more. To exploit the flaw, attacker can trick users to click a malicious link from a vulnerable WebView application and which will

A few days before the servers of the largest provider of Ultra Anonymous hosting were found to be serving custom malware designed to identify visitors who were using the Tor service to hide their identity online. The javascript code exploited a security vulnerability in the open-source version of Firefox that the Tor network is based on. In an Irish court, FBI agent admitted publicly that the agency had control of Freedom Hosting , a Tor hidden service operator company, in an effort to arrest a suspect behind the largest child porn facilitator on the planet. Eric Eoin Marques, a 28-year-old Irishman, is now awaiting extradition to the US where he could face 100 years in prison on child pornography charges. Marques is the owner and operator of Freedom Hosting , one of the largest web hosts for the Tor network., Hosting many of the darkest hidden services on the Darknet, including criminal hacking site HackBB, money laundering services, and responsible for hosting chi

Security researcher Dan Melamed has found a serious Pinterest Exploit that exposed user's information of over 70 Million accounts. The security researcher Dan Melamed has found a Critical Pinterest Exploit that compromised the privacy of over 70 Million Users, the flaw allows hackers to view the email address of any user on Pinterest. Pinterest is a very popular social media, over 70 million users including high profile figures and brands that ordinary use it, such a flaw could have a serious impact on their privacy. Dan has found the way to access to the information belonging to the owner of the Access token, as the researcher has shown it is possible to display them visiting the following URL. https://api.pinterest.com/v3/users/me/?access_token= MTQzMTYwMjozNTcxOTE5NTE2MDQyNjcxNzc6MnwxMzc3MDY4ODMyOjAtLTE2 ZWJjNDg4NzYxYTFmZWIwZmU0ODcxYzc3ZWUyN2E2YTdhOWNlN2I= Substituting the " /me/ " part of the link with the username of another Pinterest user it

What if hackers could take an existing legitimate app or update with a valid digital signature, and modify it in order to use it as a malicious Trojan to access everything on your Android phone or tablet? Last week, researchers from Bluebox Security announced that the Android operating system has been vulnerable to hackers for the past four years, allowing them to modify or manipulate any legitimate application and enabling them to transform it into a Trojan programme. The bug hasn't, so far, been spotted being exploited in the wild, but technical details and a proof-of-concept exploit have been published for a recently announced publicly by Pau Oliva Fora, a mobile security engineer at security firm ViaForensics. Jeff Forristal of Bluebox security stated that the security hole as been around since at least Android 1.6, and it could affect all Android devices i.e. around 900 million devices could be affected by hackers. CyanogenMod , a popular open source d

BlackBerry Z10 users should be aware that there is a privilege escalation vulnerability. The vulnerability potentially allows a hacker to modify or edit data on a stolen BlackBerry Z10 smartphone with BlackBerry Protect enabled, identified as BSRT-2013-006 (CVE-2013-3692) According to the advisory , an escalation of privilege vulnerability exists in the software 'BlackBerry® Protect™' of  Z10 phones, supposed to help users delete sensitive files on a lost or stolen smartphone , or recover it again if it is lost. " Taking advantage of the weak permissions could allow the malicious app to gain the device password if a remote password reset command had been issued through the BlackBerry Protect website, intercept and prevent the smartphone from acting on BlackBerry Protect commands, such as a remote smartphone wipe. " The company says that version 10.0.9.2743 is not affected and that they have found no evidence of attackers exploiting this vulnerability in

Malware authors are notorious for quickly leveraging new exploits in the public domain for nefarious purposes. A recently discovered Linux kernel Local privilege escalation exploit , which allows attackers to gain complete control of infected devices, has been ported to the Android smartphone platform. The Linux kernel 2.6.x, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, Debian 6 and Suse Enterprise Linux 11 are vulnerable to privilege escalation flaw with CVE-2013-2094 .  CVE-2013-2094 states, " The perf_swevent_init function in kernel/events/core.c in the Linux kernel before 3.8.9 uses an incorrect integer data type, which allows local users to gain privileges via a crafted perf_event_open system call. " Exploit for Linux machines is publically available here . Privilege escalation exploits are particularly dangerous as they can allow cybercriminals to gain complete control over the compromised device.  The exploit can be used to to access d

Server Administrators are being urged to update their Ruby on Rails servers following the discovery of an active malware campaign targeting vulnerable versions of the web development framework. According to security researcher Jeff Jarmoc , Hackers are exploiting a known and patched vulnerability in coding language Ruby on Rails, which allows a remote user to edit the web server's crontab to download a file to the /tmp directory where it is compiled and executed. The exploit that is currently being used by attackers adds a custom cron job (a scheduled task on Linux machines) that executes a sequence of commands. " Functionality is limited, but includes the ability to download and execute files as commanded, as well as changing servers ," Jarmoc blogged. " There's no authentication performed, so an enterprising individual could hijack these bots fairly easily by joining the IRC server and issuing the appropriate commands ." The original fla

A Google security engineer has not only discovered a Windows zero-day flaw, but has also stated that Microsoft has a knack of treating outside researchers with great hostility. Tavis Ormandy , a Google security engineer, exposed the flaw on Full Disclosure , that could be used to crash PCs or gain additional access rights. The issue is less critical than other flaws as it's not a remotely exploitable one. Ormandy said on Full Disclosure, " I don't have much free time to work on silly Microsoft code, so I'm looking for ideas on how to fix the final obstacle for exploitation. ". He's been working on it for months, and according to a later post, he has now a working exploit that " grants SYSTEM on all currently supported versions of Windows. "  " I have a working exploit that grants SYSTEM on all currently supported versions of Windows. Code is available on request to students from reputable schools ," Ormandy adds. Microsoft acknowledged

Security researchers revealed that series of " Watering Hole " has been conducted exploiting a IE8 zero-day vulnerability to target U.S. Government experts working on nuclear weapons research. The news is not surprising but it is very concerning, the principal targets of the attacks are various groups of research such as the components of U.S. Department of Labor and the U.S. Department of Energy, the news has been confirmed by principal security firms and by Microsoft corporate. The flaw has been used in a series of "watering hole" attacks, let's remind that "Watering Hole" is a technique of attack realized compromising legitimate websites using a " drive-by " exploit. The attackers restrict their audience to a individuals interested to specific content proposed by targeted website, in this way when the victim visits the page a backdoor Trojan is installed on his computer. The website compromised to exploit the IE8 zero-day is the Dep