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Unpatchable 'Starbleed' Bug in FPGA Chips Exposes Critical Devices to Hackers

Unpatchable 'Starbleed' Bug in FPGA Chips Exposes Critical Devices to Hackers
Apr 21, 2020
A newly discovered unpatchable hardware vulnerability in Xilinx programmable logic products could allow an attacker to break bitstream encryption, and clone intellectual property, change the functionality, and even implant hardware Trojans. The details of the attacks against Xilinx 7-Series and Virtex-6 Field Programmable Gate Arrays ( FPGAs ) have been covered in a paper titled " The Unpatchable Silicon: A Full Break of the Bitstream Encryption of Xilinx 7-Series FPGAs " by a group of academics from the Horst Goertz Institute for IT Security and Max Planck Institute for Cyber Security and Privacy. "We exploit a design flaw which piecewise leaks the decrypted bitstream," the researchers said. "In the attack, the FPGA is used as a decryption oracle, while only access to a configuration interface is needed. The attack does not require any sophisticated tools and, depending on the target system, can potentially be launched remotely." The findings wil

CISA Warns Patched Pulse Secure VPNs Could Still Expose Organizations to Hackers

CISA Warns Patched Pulse Secure VPNs Could Still Expose Organizations to Hackers
Apr 17, 2020
The United States Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) yesterday issued a fresh advisory alerting organizations to change all their Active Directory credentials as a defense against cyberattacks trying to leverage a known remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability in Pulse Secure VPN servers—even if they have already patched it. The warning comes three months after another CISA alert urging users and administrators to patch Pulse Secure VPN environments to thwart attacks exploiting the vulnerability. "Threat actors who successfully exploited CVE-2019-11510 and stole a victim organization's credentials will still be able to access — and move laterally through — that organization's network after the organization has patched this vulnerability if the organization did not change those stolen credentials," CISA said. CISA has also released a tool to help network administrators look for any indicators of compromise associated with the flaw.

Making Sense of Operational Technology Attacks: The Past, Present, and Future

Making Sense of Operational Technology Attacks: The Past, Present, and Future
Mar 21, 2024Operational Technology / SCADA Security
When you read reports about cyber-attacks affecting operational technology (OT), it's easy to get caught up in the hype and assume every single one is sophisticated. But are OT environments all over the world really besieged by a constant barrage of complex cyber-attacks? Answering that would require breaking down the different types of OT cyber-attacks and then looking back on all the historical attacks to see how those types compare.  The Types of OT Cyber-Attacks Over the past few decades, there has been a growing awareness of the need for improved cybersecurity practices in IT's lesser-known counterpart, OT. In fact, the lines of what constitutes a cyber-attack on OT have never been well defined, and if anything, they have further blurred over time. Therefore, we'd like to begin this post with a discussion around the ways in which cyber-attacks can either target or just simply impact OT, and why it might be important for us to make the distinction going forward. Figure 1 The Pu

Why SaaS opens the door to so many cyber threats (and how to make it safer)

Why SaaS opens the door to so many cyber threats (and how to make it safer)
Apr 17, 2020
Cloud services have become increasingly important to many companies' daily operations, and the rapid adoption of web apps has allowed businesses to continue operating with limited productivity hiccups, even as global coronavirus restrictions have forced much of the world to work from home. But at the same time, even major corporations have fallen prey to hackers. How can you maintain the integrity of your IT resources and data while still taking advantage of the benefits of software as a service (SaaS)? While cybersecurity is a broad and complicated topic, let's consider a hypothetical SaaS scenario and examine some of the risks. Imagine that one of your employees is writing a sensitive report. It could have financial or medical data in it. It could have information on a revolutionary new design. Whatever it is, the report needs to be kept confidential. What would happen if your employee writes the report in Google Docs? Let's assume that this decision wasn&

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.

Hackers Exploit Zero-Day Bugs in Draytek Devices to Target Enterprise Networks

Hackers Exploit Zero-Day Bugs in Draytek Devices to Target Enterprise Networks
Mar 27, 2020
Cybersecurity researchers with Qihoo 360's NetLab today unveiled details of two recently spotted zero-day cyberattack campaigns in the wild targeting enterprise-grade networking devices manufactured by Taiwan-based DrayTek. According to the report , at least two separate groups of hackers exploited two critical remote command injection vulnerabilities ( CVE-2020-8515 ) affecting DrayTek Vigor enterprise switches, load-balancers, routers and VPN gateway devices to eavesdrop on network traffic and install backdoors. The zero-day attacks started somewhere at the end of last November or at the beginning of December and are potentially still ongoing against thousands of publicly exposed DrayTek switche s, Vigor 2960, 3900, 300B devices that haven't yet been patched with the latest firmware updates released last month. The zero-day vulnerabilities in question can be exploited by any unauthorized remote attackers to inject and execute arbitrary commands on the system, as als

Critical RCE Bug Affects Millions of OpenWrt-based Network Devices

Critical RCE Bug Affects Millions of OpenWrt-based Network Devices
Mar 24, 2020
A cybersecurity researcher today disclosed technical details and proof-of-concept of a critical remote code execution vulnerability affecting OpenWrt , a widely used Linux-based operating system for routers, residential gateways, and other embedded devices that route network traffic. Tracked as CVE-2020-7982 , the vulnerability resides in the OPKG package manager of OpenWrt that exists in the way it performs integrity checking of downloaded packages using the SHA-256 checksums embedded in the signed repository index. While an 'opkg install' command is invoked on the victim system, the flaw could allow a remote man-in-the-middle attacker in a position to intercept the communication of a targeted device to execute arbitrary code by tricking the system into installing a malicious package or software update without verification. If exploited successfully, a remote attacker could gain complete control over the targeted OpenWrt network device, and subsequently, over the netwo

New Wi-Fi Encryption Vulnerability Affects Over A Billion Devices

New Wi-Fi Encryption Vulnerability Affects Over A Billion Devices
Feb 26, 2020
Cybersecurity researchers today uncovered a new high-severity hardware vulnerability residing in the widely-used Wi-Fi chips manufactured by Broadcom and Cypress—apparently powering over a billion devices, including smartphones, tablets, laptops, routers, and IoT gadgets. Dubbed ' Kr00k ' and tracked as CVE-2019-15126 , the flaw could let nearby remote attackers intercept and decrypt some wireless network packets transmitted over-the-air by a vulnerable device. The attacker does not need to be connected to the victim's wireless network and the flaw works against vulnerable devices using WPA2-Personal or WPA2-Enterprise protocols, with AES-CCMP encryption, to protect their network traffic. "Our tests confirmed some client devices by Amazon (Echo, Kindle), Apple (iPhone, iPad, MacBook), Google (Nexus), Samsung (Galaxy), Raspberry (Pi 3), Xiaomi (RedMi), as well as some access points by Asus and Huawei, were vulnerable to Kr00k," ESET researchers said. Acc

New LTE Network Flaw Could Let Attackers Impersonate 4G Mobile Users

New LTE Network Flaw Could Let Attackers Impersonate 4G Mobile Users
Feb 26, 2020
A group of academics from Ruhr University Bochum and New York University Abu Dhabi have uncovered security flaws in 4G LTE and 5G networks that could potentially allow hackers to impersonate users on the network and even sign up for paid subscriptions on their behalf. The impersonation attack — named " IMPersonation Attacks in 4G NeTworks " (or IMP4GT ) — exploits the mutual authentication method used by the mobile phone and the network's base station to verify their respective identities to manipulate data packets in transit. "The IMP4GT attacks exploit the missing integrity protection for user data, and a reflection mechanism of the IP stack mobile operating system. We can make use of the reflection mechanism to build an encryption and decryption oracle. Along with the lack of integrity protection, this allows to inject arbitrary packets and to decrypt packets," the researchers explained. The research was presented at the Network Distributed System Se

5 High Impact Flaws Affect Cisco Routers, Switches, IP Phones and Cameras

5 High Impact Flaws Affect Cisco Routers, Switches, IP Phones and Cameras
Feb 05, 2020
Several Cisco-manufactured network equipments have been found vulnerable to five new security vulnerabilities that could allow hackers to take complete control over them, and subsequently, over the enterprise networks they power. Four of the five high-severity bugs are remote code execution issues affecting Cisco routers, switches, and IP cameras, whereas the fifth vulnerability is a denial-of-service issue affecting Cisco IP phones. Collectively dubbed ' CDPwn ,' the reported vulnerabilities reside in the various implementations of the Cisco Discovery Protocol (CDP) that comes enabled by default on virtually all Cisco devices and can not be turned OFF. Cisco Discovery Protocol (CDP) is an administrative protocol that works at Layer 2 of the Internet Protocol (IP) stack. The protocol has been designed to let devices discover information about other locally attached Cisco equipment in the same network. According to a report Armis research team shared with The Hacker N

How Organizations Can Defend Against Advanced Persistent Threats

How Organizations Can Defend Against Advanced Persistent Threats
Dec 25, 2019
Advanced persistent threats (APTs) have emerged to be legitimate concerns for all organizations. APTs are threat actors that breach networks and infrastructures and stealthily lurk within them over extended spans of time. They typically perform complex hacks that allow them to steal or destroy data and resources. According to Accenture , APTs have been organizing themselves into groups that enable them to share tactics and tools to carry out attacks at scale. Russian group Silence APT, for instance, has been reported to be actively targeting financial institutions and have successfully stolen millions of dollars from various banks worldwide. Smaller organizations also need to be wary of such threats. APT groups also use automated tools and botnets to gain access to networks, and these tactics don't discriminate based on size, industry, or value. Any vulnerable infrastructure can be breached. It is now critical for all organizations to understand how APTs operate and impleme

14 Ways to Evade Botnet Malware Attacks On Your Computers

14 Ways to Evade Botnet Malware Attacks On Your Computers
Dec 18, 2019
Cybercriminals are busy innovators, adapting their weapons and attack strategies, and ruthlessly roaming the web in search of their next big score. Every manner of sensitive information, such as confidential employee records, customers' financial data, protected medical documents, and government files, are all subject to their relentless threats to cybersecurity . Solutions span a broad spectrum, from training email users to ensuring a VPN kill switch is in place, to adding extensive advanced layers of network protection. To successfully guard against severe threats from hackers, worm viruses to malware, such as botnet attacks, network managers need to use all tools and methods that fit well into a comprehensive cyber defense strategy. Of all the menaces mentioned above to a website owner's peace of mind, botnets arguably present the most unsettling form of security risk. They're not the mere achievements of malicious amateur cybercriminals. They're state

Gartner Says the Future of Network Security Lies with SASE

Gartner Says the Future of Network Security Lies with SASE
Nov 07, 2019
Cloud services and networking are driving the concept of digital businesses, yet traditional networking and cybersecurity architectures are far from meeting the demands of the digital business. Gartner's " The Future of Network Security Is in the Cloud " report spells out the potential for the transformation of networking and security in the cloud, built upon a new networking and security model. That model is called Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) , a term coined by Gartner's leading security analysts Neil MacDonald, Lawrence Orans, and Joe Skorupa. Gartner claims that SASE has the potential to invert the established networking and security service stack from one based in the data center into a design that shifts the focal point of identity to the user and the endpoint device. SASE addresses the numerous problems that have been discovered with traditional cybersecurity methods used in the cloud. Many of those problems have roots with the ideology that netwo

Watch Out IT Admins! Two Unpatched Critical RCE Flaws Disclosed in rConfig

Watch Out IT Admins! Two Unpatched Critical RCE Flaws Disclosed in rConfig
Nov 03, 2019
If you're using the popular rConfig network configuration management utility to protect and manage your network devices, here we have an important and urgent warning for you. A cybersecurity researcher has recently published details and proof-of-concept exploits for two unpatched, critical remote code execution vulnerabilities in the rConfig utility, at least one of which could allow unauthenticated remote attackers to compromise targeted servers, and connected network devices. Written in native PHP, rConfig is a free, open source network device configuration management utility that allows network engineers to configure and take frequent configuration snapshots of their network devices. According to the project website, rConfig is being used to manage more than 3.3 million network devices, including switches, routers, firewalls, load-balancer, WAN optimizers. What's more worrisome? Both vulnerabilities affect all versions of rConfig, including the latest rConfig ver

How MSPs can become Managed Detection and Response (MDR) Providers

How MSPs can become Managed Detection and Response (MDR) Providers
Oct 29, 2019
Managed detection and response (MDR) is one of the fastest-growing segments in the cybersecurity market. ESG research from April 2019 reveals that 27% of organizations are actively pursuing an MDR project, while another 11% plan to pursue an MDR project in the future. Cynet now enables service providers to add MDR to their portfolio and gain an important competitive advantage over competitors with Cynet 360 integrated offering of breach protection platform and CyOps 24\7 SOC team ( Learn more here ). MDR is a relatively new security service offering that emerged in recent years to assist the standard organization with a team of experts that provide 24\7 alert prioritization, investigation, and proactive threat hunting — tasks that are typically beyond its in-house capabilities. Cynet 360's complete coverage across endpoints, network, and user accounts makes it a tool of choice that provides MDR providers with real-time threat coverage across the entire environment with a
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