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A local privilege escalation exploit published today gains root on OpenBSD 7.9 by chaining a roughly 37-year-old integer overflow with a separate kernel flaw, bypassing OpenBSD's KARL kernel-address randomization and its SMAP and SMEP hardware protections. Security firm Calif, which found and reported the flaws, published a detailed writeup and full proof-of-concept code after OpenBSD shipped patches for both issues in September. The integer overflow in the shmat(4) attach function was fixed in errata 018 , shipped September 14 as a reliability fix. The reference-counting use-after-free that completes the chain was fixed separately in errata 026, shipped September 30 as a security fix. Both are available through syspatch and cover all architectures. OpenBSD 7.8 also received the integer-overflow fix. The integer overflow, the entry point for the full chain, is classified as a reliability fix, not a security fix. No CVE has been assigned for either flaw as of publication...

Microsoft said it is developing security updates to address two loopholes that it said could be abused to stage downgrade attacks against the Windows update architecture and replace current versions of the operating system files with older versions. The vulnerabilities are listed below - CVE-2024-38202 (CVSS score: 7.3) - Windows Update Stack Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability CVE-2024-21302 (CVSS score: 6.7) - Windows Secure Kernel Mode Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability Credited with discovering and reporting the flaws is SafeBreach Labs researcher Alon Leviev, who presented the findings at Black Hat USA 2024 and DEF CON 32 . CVE-2024-38202, which is rooted in the Windows Backup component, allows an "attacker with basic user privileges to reintroduce previously mitigated vulnerabilities or circumvent some features of Virtualization Based Security (VBS)," the tech giant said. It, however, noted that an attacker attempting to leverage the flaw would have to c...

A new reminder for those who are still holding on to the Windows 7 operating system—you have one year left until Microsoft ends support for its 9-year-old operating system. So it's time for you to upgrade your OS and say goodbye to Windows 7, as its five years of extended support will end on January 14, 2020—that's precisely one year from today. After that date, the tech giant will no longer release free security updates, bug fixes and new functionalities for the operating system that's still widely used by people, which could eventually leave a significant number of users more susceptible to malware attacks. However, the end of free support doesn't end Windows 7 support for big business and enterprise customers. As always, Microsoft does make exceptions for certain companies that are willing to pay a lot of money to continue their support. According to a 'Death of Windows 7' report from content delivery firm Kollective, as many as 43% of enterprises ...