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Networking equipment maker Cisco Systems has rolled out patches to address three critical security vulnerabilities in its IOS XE network operating system that remote attackers could potentially abuse to execute arbitrary code with administrative privileges and trigger a denial-of-service (DoS) condition on vulnerable devices. The list of three flaws is as follows - CVE-2021-34770  (CVSS score: 10.0) - Cisco IOS XE Software for Catalyst 9000 Family Wireless Controllers CAPWAP Remote Code Execution Vulnerability CVE-2021-34727  (CVSS score: 9.8) - Cisco IOS XE SD-WAN Software Buffer Overflow Vulnerability CVE-2021-1619  (CVSS score: 9.8) - Cisco IOS XE Software NETCONF and RESTCONF Authentication Bypass Vulnerability The most severe of the issues is CVE-2021-34770, which Cisco calls a "logic error" that occurs during the processing of  CAPWAP  (Control And Provisioning of Wireless Access Points) packets that enable a central wireless Controller to manage a group of wire

As many as 11 security vulnerabilities have been disclosed in Nagios network management systems, some of which could be chained to achieve pre-authenticated remote code execution with the highest privileges, as well as lead to credential theft and phishing attacks.  Industrial cybersecurity firm Claroty, which discovered the flaws, said flaws in tools such as Nagios make them an attractive target owing to their "oversight of core servers, devices, and other critical components in the enterprise network." The issues have since been fixed in updates released in August with Nagios XI 5.8.5 or above, Nagios XI Switch Wizard 2.5.7 or above, Nagios XI Docker Wizard 1.13 or above, and Nagios XI WatchGuard 1.4.8 or above. " SolarWinds  and  Kaseya  were likely targeted not only because of their large and influential customer bases, but also because of their respective technologies' access to enterprise networks, whether it was managing IT, operational technology (OT), or

As a vCISO, you are responsible for your client's cybersecurity strategy and risk governance. This incorporates multiple disciplines, from research to execution to reporting. Recently, we published a comprehensive playbook for vCISOs, "Your First 100 Days as a vCISO – 5 Steps to Success" , which covers all the phases entailed in launching a successful vCISO engagement, along with recommended actions to take, and step-by-step examples.  Following the success of the playbook and the requests that have come in from the MSP/MSSP community, we decided to drill down into specific parts of vCISO reporting and provide more color and examples. In this article, we focus on how to create compelling narratives within a report, which has a significant impact on the overall MSP/MSSP value proposition.  This article brings the highlights of a recent guided workshop we held, covering what makes a successful report and how it can be used to enhance engagement with your cyber security clients.

Networking equipment major Cisco has rolled out patches to address critical vulnerabilities impacting its Small Business VPN routers that could be abused by a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code and even cause a denial-of-service (DoS) condition. The issues, tracked as CVE-2021-1609 (CVSS score: 9.8) and CVE-2021-1610 (CVSS score: 7.2), reside in the web-based management interface of the Small Business RV340, RV340W, RV345, and RV345P Dual WAN Gigabit VPN Routers running a firmware release prior to version 1.0.03.22. Both the issues stem from a lack of proper validation of HTTP requests, thus permitting a bad actor to send a specially-crafted HTTP request to a vulnerable device. Successful exploitation of CVE-2021-1609 could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to execute arbitrary code on the device or cause the device to reload, resulting in a DoS condition. CVE-2021-1610, concerns a command injection vulnerability that, if exploited, could permit an authenticated adve

Cybersecurity researchers on Wednesday disclosed 14 vulnerabilities affecting a commonly-used TCP/IP stack used in millions of Operational Technology (OT) devices manufactured by no fewer than 200 vendors and deployed in manufacturing plants, power generation, water treatment, and critical infrastructure sectors. The shortcomings, collectively dubbed "INFRA:HALT," target NicheStack, potentially enabling an attacker to achieve remote code execution, denial of service, information leak, TCP spoofing, and even DNS cache poisoning. NicheStack (aka InterNiche stack) is a closed-source TCP/IP stack for embedded systems that is designed to provide internet connectivity industrial equipment, and is incorporated by major industrial automation vendors like Siemens, Emerson, Honeywell, Mitsubishi Electric, Rockwell Automation, and Schneider Electric in their programmable logic controllers (PLCs) and other products. "Attackers could disrupt a building's HVAC system or take

A newly devised variant of the  NAT Slipstreaming attack  can be leveraged to compromise and expose any device in an internal network, according to the latest research. Detailed by enterprise IoT security firm Armis, the  new attack  (CVE-2020-16043 and CVE-2021-23961) builds on the previously disclosed technique to bypass routers and firewalls and reach any unmanaged device within the internal network from the Internet. First  disclosed  by security researcher Samy Kamkar in late October 2020, the JavaScript-based attack relied on luring a user into visiting a malicious website to circumvent browser-based port restrictions and allow the attacker to remotely access TCP/UDP services on the victim's device, even those that were protected by a firewall or NAT. Although partial mitigations were released on November 11 to thwart the attack in  Chrome 87 ,  Firefox 84 , and  Safari  by preventing connections on port 5060 or 5061, Armis researchers Ben Seri and Gregory Vishnipolsky r

A team of researchers today unveiled two critical security vulnerabilities in Dell Wyse Thin clients that could have potentially allowed attackers to remotely execute malicious code and access arbitrary files on affected devices. The flaws, which were uncovered by healthcare cybersecurity provider CyberMDX and reported to Dell in June 2020, affects all devices running ThinOS versions 8.6 and below. Dell has addressed both the vulnerabilities in an  update  released today. The flaws also have a CVSS score of 10 out of 10, making them critical in severity. Thin clients are typically computers that run from resources stored on a central server instead of a localized hard drive. They work by establishing a remote connection to the server, which takes care of launching and running applications and storing relevant data. Tracked as CVE-2020-29491 and CVE-2020-29492 , the security shortcomings in Wyse's thin clients stem from the fact that the FTP sessions used to pull firmware upd

Some widely sold D-Link VPN router models have been found vulnerable to three new high-risk security vulnerabilities, leaving millions of home and business networks open to cyberattacks—even if they are secured with a strong password. Discovered by researchers at Digital Defense, the three security shortcomings were responsibly disclosed to D-Link on August 11, which, if exploited, could allow remote attackers to execute arbitrary commands on vulnerable networking devices via specially-crafted requests and even launch denial-of-service attacks. D-Link DSR-150, DSR-250, DSR-500, and DSR-1000AC and other VPN router models in the DSR Family running firmware version 3.14 and 3.17 are vulnerable to the remotely exploitable root command injection flaw. The Taiwanese networking equipment maker  confirmed  the issues in an advisory on December 1, adding that the patches were under development for two of three flaws, which have now been released to the public at the time of writing. "

Complexity is the bane of effective cybersecurity. The need to maintain an increasing array of cybersecurity tools to protect organizations from an expanding set of cyber threats is leading to runaway costs, staff inefficiencies, and suboptimal threat response. Small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with limited budgets and staff are significantly impacted. On average, SMEs manage more than a dozen different security tools, making it very difficult for security teams to manage and orchestrate. SMEs are, understandably, looking to consolidate their security tools to make cybersecurity more manageable and cost-effective. The challenge for these companies is to figure out how to consolidate cybersecurity tools without losing needed protections safely. An upcoming webinar is set to help SMEs with this very issue ( sign up here ). The Cybersecurity Complexity Problem Cannot Be Overemphasized Over the past decade (at least), CISOs have continuously lobbied for increased cybersecurity

A group of academics from the University of California and Tsinghua University has uncovered a series of critical security flaws that could lead to a revival of DNS cache poisoning attacks. Dubbed " SAD DNS attack " (short for Side-channel AttackeD DNS), the technique makes it possible for a malicious actor to carry out an off-path attack, rerouting any traffic originally destined to a specific domain to a server under their control, thereby allowing them to eavesdrop and tamper with the communications. "This represents an important milestone — the first weaponizable network side channel attack that has serious security impacts," the researchers said. "The attack allows an off-path attacker to inject a malicious DNS record into a DNS cache." Tracked as CVE-2020-25705, the findings were presented at the ACM Conference on Computer, and Communications Security (CCS '20) held this week. The flaw affects operating systems Linux 3.18-5.10, Windows Serv

As software eats the world, the world faces a software security crisis. The movement to modern software such as cloud technologies and microservice architectures is essential to innovate quickly. Yet, nearly three in four developers say that security slows down Agile and DevOps. Neither developers nor security teams are to blame. DevOps speed is held back by a 15-year-old, scan-based application security (AppSec) model designed for the early 2000s. Traditional security tools cannot keep up with today's rapid development pace or modern application portfolio scale. However, sacrificing security for development speed places critical and confidential personal and business information at risk—from financial to healthcare data—and can disrupt operations or even cause outages. Code Scanners Cannot Meet Modern DevOps Legacy AppSec approaches that rely on point-in-time scanning are plagued by development delays and highly inaccurate results. Scans take many hours, if not days—not id

Many companies today have developed a Cybersecurity Incident Response (IR) plan. It's a sound security practice to prepare a comprehensive IR plan to help the organization react to a sudden security incident in an orderly, rational manner. Otherwise, the organization will develop a plan while frantically responding to the incident, a recipe ripe for mistakes. Heavyweight boxer Mike Tyson once said, "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." A significant cybersecurity incident is an equivalent punch in the mouth to the cybersecurity team and perhaps the entire organization. At least at first. Developing an Incident Response plan is undoubtedly smart, but it only gets the organization so far. Depending on the severity of the incident and the level of cybersecurity expertise within the breached organization, a cybersecurity incident often leads to panic and turmoil within the organization – plan or no plan. It's very unsettling to have system

Security researchers have outlined a new technique that renders a remote timing-based side-channel attack more effective regardless of the network congestion between the adversary and the target server. Remote timing attacks that work over a network connection are predominantly affected by variations in network transmission time (or jitter), which, in turn, depends on the load of the network connection at any given point in time. But since measuring the time taken to execute cryptographic algorithms is crucial to carrying out a timing attack and consequently leak information, the jitter on the network path from the attacker to the server can make it impractical to successfully exploit timing side-channels that rely on a small difference in execution time. The new method, called Timeless Timing Attacks (TTAs) by researchers from DistriNet Research Group and New York University Abu Dhabi, instead leverages multiplexing of network protocols and concurrent execution by applicati

Many endpoint security vendors are beginning to offer their applications only in the cloud, sunsetting their on-premise offerings. This approach may be beneficial to the vendor, but many clients continue to need on-premise solutions. Vendors that sunset on-premise solutions force clients that prefer on-premise solutions to either change their operating environment and approach or change vendors. Fortunately, some vendors continue to provide their offerings in both cloud and on-premise versions. One such company is Cynet , which allows clients to deploy their EDR and XDR (Extended Detection and Response) solutions in on-premise, cloud, and hybrid cloud delivery models. Clients can access the solution in any way they see fit now and into the future. This provides an alternative for organizations that do not want to be forced to move into the cloud. Cloud vs. On-Premise The cloud vs. on-premise argument continues to rage. Recently, however, it seems that everyone is jumpin

SAP has patched a critical vulnerability impacting the LM Configuration Wizard component in NetWeaver Application Server (AS) Java platform, allowing an unauthenticated attacker to take control of SAP applications. The bug, dubbed RECON and tracked as CVE-2020-6287 , is rated with a maximum CVSS score of 10 out of 10, potentially affecting over 40,000 SAP customers, according to cybersecurity firm Onapsis, which uncovered the flaw . "If successfully exploited, a remote, unauthenticated attacker can obtain unrestricted access to SAP systems through the creation of high-privileged users and the execution of arbitrary operating system commands with the privileges of the SAP service user account, which has unrestricted access to the SAP database and is able to perform application maintenance activities, such as shutting down federated SAP applications," the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said in an advisory . "The confidentiality, integr

Lately, we can't help noticing an endless cycle where the more enterprises invest in threat prevention; the more hackers adapt and continue to penetrate enterprises. To make things worse, detecting these penetrations still takes too long with an average dwell time that exceeds 100 (!) days. To keep the enterprise protected, IT needs to figure out a way to break this endless cycle without purchasing complex security and data analysis tools and hiring the right (skilled and expensive) security professionals to operate them. Enter MDR An advanced security service, Managed Detection and Response (MDR), provides ongoing threat detection and response, leveraging AI and machine learning to investigate, alert, and contain threats. MDR is becoming popular and gaining traction. In fact, Gartner forecasts that by 2024, 25% of organizations will be using MDR services, up from less than 5% today. And by 2024, 40% of midsize enterprises will use MDR as their only managed security s