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Google has patched two more zero-day flaws in the Chrome web browser for desktop, making it the fourth and fifth actively exploited vulnerabilities addressed by the search giant in recent weeks. The company released  86.0.4240.198  for Windows, Mac, and Linux, which it said will be rolling out over the coming days/weeks to all users. Tracked as CVE-2020-16013 and CVE-2020-16017, the flaws were discovered and reported to Google by "anonymous" sources, unlike previous cases, which were uncovered by the company's Project Zero elite security team. Google acknowledged that exploits for both the vulnerabilities exist in the wild but stopped short of sharing more specifics to allow a majority of users to install the fixes. According to the release notes, the two flaws are: CVE-2020-16013:  An "inappropriate implementation" of its V8 JavaScript rendering engine was reported on November 9. CVE-2020-16017:  An  use-after-free  memory corruption issue in Chrome

Efforts to disrupt TrickBot may have  shut down  most of its critical infrastructure, but the operators behind the notorious malware aren't sitting idle. According to new findings shared by cybersecurity firm  Netscout , TrickBot's authors have moved portions of their code to Linux in an attempt to widen the scope of victims that could be targeted. TrickBot, a financial Trojan first detected in 2016, has been traditionally a Windows-based crimeware solution, employing different modules to perform a wide range of malicious activities on target networks, including credential theft and perpetrate ransomware attacks. But over the past few weeks, twin efforts led by the US Cyber Command and Microsoft have helped to  eliminate 94%  of TrickBot's command-and-control (C2) servers that were in use and the new infrastructure the criminals operating TrickBot attempted to bring online to replace the previously disabled servers. Despite the steps taken to impede TrickBot, Microsof

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

Amnesty International today exposed details of a new surveillance campaign that targeted Egyptian civil society organizations with previously undisclosed versions of FinSpy spyware designed to target Linux and macOS systems. Developed by a German company , FinSpy is extremely powerful spying software that is being sold as a legal law enforcement tool to governments around the world but has also been found in use by oppressive and dubious regimes to spy on activists. FinSpy, also known as FinFisher, can target both desktop and mobile operating systems, including Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, and Linux, to gain spying capabilities, including secretly turning on their webcams and microphones, recording everything the victim types on the keyboard, intercepting calls, and exfiltration of data. According to the human rights organization Amnesty International , the newly discovered campaign is not linked to 'NilePhish,' a hacking group known for attacking Egyptian NGOs in a ser

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered an entirely new kind of Linux malware dubbed "CDRThief" that targets voice over IP (VoIP) softswitches in an attempt to steal phone call metadata. "The primary goal of the malware is to exfiltrate various private data from a compromised softswitch, including call detail records ( CDR )," ESET researchers said in a Thursday analysis . "To steal this metadata, the malware queries internal MySQL databases used by the softswitch. Thus, attackers demonstrate a good understanding of the internal architecture of the targeted platform." Softswitches (short for software switches) are generally VoIP servers that allow for telecommunication networks to provide management of voice, fax, data and video traffic, and call routing. ESET's research uncovered that CDRThief targeted a specific Linux VoIP platform, namely the VOS2009 and 3000 softswitches from Chinese company Linknat, and had its malicious functionalit

OpenSMTPD has been found vulnerable to yet another critical vulnerability that could allow remote attackers to take complete control over email servers running BSD or Linux operating systems. OpenSMTPD , also known as OpenBSD SMTP Server, is an open-source implementation of the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) to deliver messages on a local machine or to relay them to other SMTP servers. It was initially developed as part of the OpenBSD project but now comes pre-installed on many UNIX-based systems. Discovered by experts at Qualys Research Labs, who also reported a similar RCE flaw in the email server application last month, the latest out-of-bounds read issue, tracked as  CVE-2020-8794 , resides in a component of the OpenSMTPD's client-side code that was introduced nearly 5 years ago. Just like the previous issue, which attackers started exploiting in the wild just a day after its public disclosure, the new OpenSMTPD flaw could also let remote hackers execute arbit

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new critical vulnerability ( CVE-2020-7247 ) in the OpenSMTPD email server that could allow remote attackers to take complete control over BSD and many Linux based servers. OpenSMTPD is an open-source implementation of the server-side SMTP protocol that was initially developed as part of the OpenBSD project but now comes pre-installed on many UNIX-based systems. According to Qualys Research Labs, who discovered this vulnerability, the issue resides in the OpenSMTPD's sender address validation function, called smtp_mailaddr(), which can be exploited to execute arbitrary shell commands with elevated root privileges on a vulnerable server just by sending specially crafted SMTP messages to it. The flaw affects OpenBSD version 6.6 and works against the default configuration for both, the locally enabled interface as well as remotely if the daemon has been enabled to listen on all interfaces and accepts external mail. "Exploit

A team of cybersecurity researchers has disclosed a new severe vulnerability affecting most Linux and Unix-like operating systems, including FreeBSD, OpenBSD, macOS, iOS, and Android, that could allow remote 'network adjacent attackers' to spy on and tamper with encrypted VPN connections. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2019-14899, resides in the networking stack of various operating systems and can be exploited against both IPv4 and IPv6 TCP streams. Since the vulnerability does not rely on the VPN technology used, the attack works against widely implemented virtual private network protocols like OpenVPN, WireGuard, IKEv2/IPSec, and more, the researchers confirmed. This vulnerability can be exploited by a network attacker — controlling an access point or connected to the victim's network — just by sending unsolicited network packets to a targeted device and observing replies, even if they are encrypted. As explained by the researchers, though there are variati

A 39-year-old password of Ken Thompson , the co-creator of the UNIX operating system among, has finally been cracked that belongs to a BSD-based system, one of the original versions of UNIX, which was back then used by various computer science pioneers. In 2014, developer Leah Neukirchen spotted an interesting " /etc/passwd " file in a publicly available source tree of historian BSD version 3, which includes hashed passwords belonging to more than two dozens Unix luminaries who worked on UNIX development, including Dennis Ritchie, Stephen R. Bourne, Ken Thompson, Eric Schmidt, Stuart Feldman, and Brian W. Kernighan. Since all passwords in that list are protected using now-depreciated DES-based crypt(3) algorithm and limited to at most 8 characters, Neukirchen decided to brute-force them for fun and successfully cracked passwords (listed below) for almost everyone using password cracking tools like John the Ripper and hashcat. The ones that she wasn't able to crack

If you are running a KDE desktop environment on your Linux operating system, you need to be extra careful and avoid downloading any ".desktop" or ".directory" file for a while. A cybersecurity researcher has disclosed an unpatched zero-day vulnerability in the KDE software framework that could allow maliciously crafted .desktop and .directory files to silently run arbitrary code on a user's computer—without even requiring the victim to actually open it. KDE Plasma is one of the most popular open-source widget-based desktop environment for Linux users and comes as a default desktop environment on many Linux distributions, such as Manjaro, openSUSE, Kubuntu, and PCLinuxOS. Security researcher Dominik Penner who discovered the vulnerability contacted The Hacker News, informing that there's a command injection vulnerability in KDE 4/5 Plasma desktop due to the way KDE handles .desktop and .directory files. "When a .desktop or .directory file is

A German security researcher has publicly disclosed details of a serious vulnerability in one of the most popular FTP server applications, which is currently being used by more than one million servers worldwide. The vulnerable software in question is ProFTPD , an open source FTP server used by a large number of popular businesses and websites including SourceForge, Samba and Slackware, and comes pre-installed with many Linux and Unix distributions, like Debian. Discovered by Tobias Mädel , the vulnerability resides in the mod_copy module of the ProFTPD application, a component that allows users to copy files/directories from one place to another on a server without having to transfer the data to the client and back. According to Mädel, an incorrect access control issue in the mod_copy module could be exploited by an authenticated user to unauthorizedly copy any file on a specific location of the vulnerable FTP server where the user is otherwise not allowed to write a file.

Yes, you heard me right. Microsoft is taking another step forward to show its love for Linux and open source community by shipping a full Linux kernel in Windows 10 this summer. No, that doesn't mean Microsoft is making its Windows 10 a Linux distro, but the company will begin to ship an in-house custom built Linux kernel later this year starting with the Windows 10 Insider builds. Microsoft announced the move in a blog post while unveiling Windows Subsystem for Linux version 2.0 (or WSL 2 ) that will feature "dramatic file system performance increases" and support more Linux apps like Docker. So, to support this entirely new architecture for the WSL 2, Windows 10 will have its own Linux kernel. Although this is not the first time Microsoft has shipped a Linux kernel as the company has already shipped its own custom Linux kernel on Azure Sphere  last year, this is the first time a Linux kernel is shipped with Windows. Unlike Windows Subsystem for Linux version

Wohooo! Great news for hackers and penetration testers. Offensive Security has just released Kali Linux 2019.1, the first 2019 version of its Swiss army knife for cybersecurity professionals. The latest version of Kali Linux operating system includes kernel up to version 4.19.13 and patches for numerous bugs, along with many updated software, like Metasploit, theHarvester, DBeaver, and more. Kali Linux 2019.1 comes with the latest version of Metasploit (version 5.0) penetration testing tool, which "includes database and automation APIs, new evasion capabilities, and usability improvements throughout," making it more efficient platform for penetration testers. Metasploit version 5.0 is the software's first major release since version 4.0 which came out in 2011. Talking about ARM images, Kali Linux 2019.1 has now once again added support for Banana Pi and Banana Pro that are on kernel version 4.19. "Veyron has been moved to a 4.19 kernel, and the Raspbe

Ubuntu and some other Linux distributions suffer from a severe privilege escalation vulnerability that could allow a local attacker or a malicious program to obtain root privileges and total control over the targeted system. Dubbed " Dirty_Sock " and identified as CVE-2019-7304 , the vulnerability was discovered by security researcher Chris Moberly, who privately disclosed it to Canonical, the maker of Ubuntu, late last month. The vulnerability resides in the REST API for snapd service , a universal Linux packaging system that makes an application compatible for various Linux distributions without requiring any modification. Built by Canonical, snapd comes by default installed on all versions of Ubuntu and also used by other Linux distributions, including Debian, OpenSUSE, Arch Linux, Solus, and Fedora. Snap packages are basically applications compressed together with their dependencies that also includes instructions on how to run and interact with other software o

A serious security vulnerability has been discovered in the core runC container code that affects several open-source container management systems, potentially allowing attackers to escape Linux container and obtain unauthorized, root-level access to the host operating system. The vulnerability, identified as  CVE-2019-5736 , was discovered by open source security researchers Adam Iwaniuk and Borys Popławski and publicly disclosed by Aleksa Sarai, a senior software engineer and runC maintainer at SUSE Linux GmbH on Monday. The flaw resides in runC—a lightweight low-level command-line tool for spawning and running containers, an operating-system-level virtualization method for running multiple isolated systems on a host using a single kernel. Originally created by Docker, runC is the default container run-time for Docker, Kubernetes, ContainerD, CRI-O, and other container-dependent programs, and is widely being used by major cloud hosting and server providers. runC Containe

Just in time… Some cybersecurity experts this week arguing over Twitter in favor of not using HTTPS and suggesting software developers to only rely on signature-based package verification, just because APT on Linux also does the same. Ironically, a security researcher just today revealed details of a new critical remote code execution flaw in the apt-get utility that can be exploited by a remote, man-in-the middle attacker to compromise Linux machines. The flaw, apparently, once again demonstrates that if the software download ecosystem uses HTTPS to communicate safely, such attacks can easily be mitigated at the first place. Discovered by Max Justicz, the vulnerability (CVE-2019-3462) resides in the APT package manager, a widely used utility that handles installation, update and removal of software on Debian, Ubuntu, and other Linux distributions. According to a blog post published by Justicz and details shared with The Hacker News, the APT utility doesn't properly

A set of 36-year-old vulnerabilities has been uncovered in the Secure Copy Protocol (SCP) implementation of many client applications that can be exploited by malicious servers to overwrite arbitrary files in the SCP client target directory unauthorizedly. Session Control Protocol (SCP), also known as secure copy, is a network protocol that allows users to securely transfer files between a local host and a remote host using RCP (Remote Copy Protocol) and SSH protocol. In other terms, SCP, which dates back to 1983, is a secure version of RCP that uses authentication and encryption of SSH protocol to transfer files between a server and a client. Discovered by Harry Sintonen, one of F-Secure's Senior Security Consultants, the vulnerabilities exist due to poor validations performed by the SCP clients, which can be abused by malicious servers or man-in-the-middle (MiTM) attackers to drop or overwrite arbitrary files on the client's system. "Many scp clients fail to ver

Security researchers have discovered three vulnerabilities in Systemd, a popular init system and service manager for most Linux operating systems, that could allow unprivileged local attackers or malicious programs to gain root access on the targeted systems. The vulnerabilities, assigned as CVE-2018-16864, CVE-2018-16865, and CVE-2018-16866, actually resides in the "systemd-journald" service that collects information from different sources and creates event logs by logging information in the journal. The vulnerabilities, which were discovered and reported by security researchers at Qualys, affect all systemd-based Linux distributions, including Redhat and Debian , according to the researchers. However, some Linux distros such as SUSE Linux Enterprise 15, openSUSE Leap 15.0, and Fedora 28 and 29 are not affected, as "their userspace [code] is compiled with GCC's -fstack-clash-protection ." The first two flaws are memory corruptions issues, while the

Hold tight, this may blow your mind… A low-privileged user account on most Linux operating systems with UID value anything greater than 2147483647 can execute any systemctl command unauthorizedly—thanks to a newly discovered vulnerability. The reported vulnerability actually resides in PolicyKit (also known as polkit)—an application-level toolkit for Unix-like operating systems that defines policies, handles system-wide privileges and provides a way for non-privileged processes to communicate with privileged ones, such as "sudo," that does not grant root permission to an entire process. The issue, tracked as CVE-2018-19788 , impacts PolicyKit version 0.115 which comes pre-installed on most popular Linux distributions, including Red Hat , Debian ,  Ubuntu , and CentOS. The vulnerability exists due to PolicyKit's improper validation of permission requests for any low-privileged user with UID greater than INT_MAX. Where, INT_MAX is a constant in computer progra

It's been quite a year for the open source platforms. Earlier this year, Microsoft acquired popular code repository hosting service GitHub for $7.5 billion , and now IBM has just announced the biggest open-source business deal ever. IBM today confirmed that it would be acquiring open source Linux firm Red Hat for $190 per share in cash, working out to a total value of approximately $34 billion. Red Hat, known for its Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) operating system, is a leading software company that offers open-source software products to the enterprise community. Even Oracle uses Red Hat's source code for its Oracle Linux product. Red Hat's last year revenue was $2.4 billion, and this year the company has earned $2.9 billion. But if Red Hat products are open source and updates are free, you might be wondering how does the company earn. Red Hat was one of the first companies who found a successful way to make money from free open-source software. It offers consul

A cybersecurity researcher with Google Project Zero has released the details, and a proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit for a high severity vulnerability that exists in Linux kernel since kernel version 3.16 through 4.18.8. Discovered by white hat hacker Jann Horn, the kernel vulnerability (CVE-2018-17182) is a cache invalidation bug in the Linux memory management subsystem that leads to use-after-free vulnerability, which if exploited, could allow an attacker to gain root privileges on the targeted system. The use-after-free (UAF) vulnerabilities are a class of memory corruption bug that can be exploited by unprivileged users to corrupt or alter data in memory, enabling them to cause a denial of service (system crash) or escalate privileges to gain administrative access on a system. Linux Kernel Exploit Takes an Hour to Gain Root Access However, Horn says his PoC Linux kernel exploit made available to the public "takes about an hour to run before popping a root shell."