The Hacker News - Cybersecurity News and Analysis: patch update

The Apache Software Foundation on Thursday released additional security updates for its HTTP Server product to remediate what it says is an "incomplete fix" for an  actively exploited  path traversal and remote code execution flaw that it patched earlier this week. CVE-2021-42013 , as the new vulnerability is identified as, builds upon  CVE-2021-41773 , a flaw that impacts Apache web servers running version 2.4.49 and involves a  path normalization  bug that could enable an adversary to access and view arbitrary files stored on a vulnerable server. Although the flaw was addressed by the maintainers in version 2.4.50, a day after the patches were released it became known that the weakness could also be abused to gain remote code execution if the "mod_cgi" module was loaded and the configuration "require all denied" was absent, prompting Apache to issue another round of emergency updates. "It was found that the fix for CVE-2021-41773 in Apache HTT

Network security company SonicWall has addressed a critical security vulnerability affecting its Secure Mobile Access (SMA) 100 series appliances that can permit remote, unauthenticated attackers to gain administrator access on targeted devices remotely. Tracked as  CVE-2021-20034 , the arbitrary file deletion flaw is rated 9.1 out of a maximum of 10 on the CVSS scoring system, and could allow an adversary to bypass path traversal checks and delete any file, causing the devices to reboot to factory default settings. "The vulnerability is due to an improper limitation of a file path to a restricted directory potentially leading to arbitrary file deletion as 'nobody,'" the San Jose-based firm  noted  in an advisory published Thursday. "There is no evidence that this vulnerability is being exploited in the wild." SonicWall credited Wenxu Yin of Alpha Lab, Qihoo 360, with reporting the security shortcoming, which impacts SMA 100 Series — SMA 200, SMA 210,

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

Network-attached storage (NAS) appliance maker QNAP said it's  currently   investigating  two recently patched security flaws in OpenSSL to determine their potential impact, adding it will release security updates should its products turn out to be vulnerable. Tracked as CVE-2021-3711 (CVSS score: 7.5) and CVE-2021-3712 (CVSS score: 4.4), the  weaknesses  concern a high-severity buffer overflow in SM2 decryption function and a buffer overrun issue when processing ASN.1 strings that could be abused by adversaries to run arbitrary code, cause a denial-of-service condition, or result in disclosure of private memory contents, such as private keys, or sensitive plaintext — CVE-2021-3711  - OpenSSL SM2 decryption buffer overflow CVE-2021-3712  - Read buffer overruns processing ASN.1 strings "A malicious attacker who is able present SM2 content for decryption to an application could cause attacker chosen data to overflow the buffer by up to a maximum of 62 bytes altering the c

Cisco Systems on Wednesday issued patches to address a critical security vulnerability affecting the Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC) interface used in its Nexus 9000 Series Switches that could be potentially abused to read or write arbitrary files on a vulnerable system. Tracked as  CVE-2021-1577  (CVSS score: 9.1), the issue — which is due to improper access control — could enable an unauthenticated, remote attacker to upload a file to the appliances. " A successful exploit could allow the attacker to read or write arbitrary files on an affected device," the company  said  in an advisory. The APIC appliance is a centralized, clustered controller that programmatically automates network provisioning and control based on the application requirements and policies across physical and virtual environments. Cisco said it discovered the vulnerability during internal security testing by the Cisco Advanced Security Initiatives Group (ASIG). Additionally, the

Oracle on Tuesday released its quarterly  Critical Patch Update for July 2021  with 342 fixes spanning across multiple products, some of which could be exploited by a remote attacker to take control of an affected system. Chief among them is  CVE-2019-2729 , a critical deserialization vulnerability via XMLDecoder in Oracle WebLogic Server Web Services that's remotely exploitable without authentication. It's worth noting that the weakness was originally addressed as part of an  out-of-band security update  in June 2019. Oracle WebLogic Server is an application server that functions as a platform for developing, deploying, and running enterprise Java-based applications. The flaw, which is rated 9.8 out of a maximum of 10 on the CVSS severity scale, affects WebLogic Server versions 11.1.2.4 and 11.2.5.0 and exists within the Oracle Hyperion Infrastructure Technology. Also fixed in WebLogic Server are six other flaws, three of which have been assigned a CVSS score of 9.8 out

Networking equipment maker SonicWall is alerting customers of an "imminent" ransomware campaign targeting its Secure Mobile Access (SMA) 100 series and Secure Remote Access (SRA) products running unpatched and end-of-life 8.x firmware. The warning comes more than a month after reports emerged that remote access vulnerabilities in SonicWall SRA 4600 VPN appliances ( CVE-2019-7481 ) are being exploited as an initial access vector for ransomware attacks to breach corporate networks worldwide. "SonicWall has been made aware of threat actors actively targeting Secure Mobile Access (SMA) 100 series and Secure Remote Access (SRA) products running unpatched and end-of-life (EOL) 8.x firmware in an imminent ransomware campaign using stolen credentials," the company  said . "The exploitation targets a known vulnerability that has been patched in newer versions of firmware." SMA 1000 series products are not affected by the flaw, SonicWall noted, urging businesse

Microsoft rolled out  Patch Tuesday updates  for the month of July with fixes for a total of 117 security vulnerabilities, including nine zero-day flaws, of which four are said to be under active attacks in the wild, potentially enabling an adversary to take control of affected systems.  Of the 117 issues, 13 are rated Critical, 103 are rated Important, and one is rated as Moderate in severity, with six of these bugs publicly known at the time of release.  The updates span across several of Microsoft's products, including Windows, Bing, Dynamics, Exchange Server, Office, Scripting Engine, Windows DNS, and Visual Studio Code. July also marks a dramatic jump in the volume of vulnerabilities, surpassing the number Microsoft collectively addressed as part of its updates in  May  (55) and  June  (50). Chief among the security flaws actively exploited are as follows — CVE-2021-34527  (CVSS score: 8.8) - Windows Print Spooler Remote Code Execution Vulnerability (publicly disclosed

Even as Microsoft  expanded patches  for the so-called PrintNightmare vulnerability for Windows 10 version 1607, Windows Server 2012, and Windows Server 2016, it has come to light that the fix for the remote code execution exploit in the Windows Print Spooler service can be bypassed in certain scenarios, effectively defeating the security protections and permitting attackers to run arbitrary code on infected systems. On Tuesday, the Windows maker issued an  emergency out-of-band update  to address  CVE-2021-34527  (CVSS score: 8.8) after the flaw was accidentally disclosed by researchers from Hong Kong-based cybersecurity firm Sangfor late last month, at which point it emerged that the issue was different from another bug — tracked as  CVE-2021-1675  — that was patched by Microsoft on June 8. "Several days ago, two security vulnerabilities were found in Microsoft Windows' existing printing mechanism," Yaniv Balmas, head of cyber research at Check Point, told The Hack

VMware has rolled out security updates to resolve a critical flaw affecting Carbon Black App Control that could be exploited to bypass authentication and take control of vulnerable systems. The vulnerability, identified as CVE-2021-21998, is rated 9.4 out of 10 in severity by the industry-standard Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) and affects App Control (AppC) versions 8.0.x, 8.1.x, 8.5.x, and 8.6.x. Carbon Black App Control  is a security solution designed to lock down critical systems and servers to prevent unauthorized changes in the face of cyber-attacks and ensure compliance with regulatory mandates such as PCI-DSS, HIPAA, GDPR, SOX, FISMA, and NERC. "A malicious actor with network access to the VMware Carbon Black App Control management server might be able to obtain administrative access to the product without the need to authenticate," the California-based cloud computing and virtualization technology company  said  in an advisory. CVE-2021-21998 is th

Microsoft on Tuesday released another round of  security updates  for Windows operating system and other supported software, squashing 50 vulnerabilities, including six zero-days that are said to be under active attack. The flaws were identified and resolved in Microsoft Windows, .NET Core and Visual Studio, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Edge (Chromium-based and EdgeHTML), SharePoint Server, Hyper-V, Visual Studio Code - Kubernetes Tools, Windows HTML Platform, and Windows Remote Desktop. Of these 50 bugs, five are rated Critical, and 45 are rated Important in severity, with three of the issues publicly known at the time of release. The vulnerabilities that being actively exploited are listed below - CVE-2021-33742  (CVSS score: 7.5) - Windows MSHTML Platform Remote Code Execution Vulnerability CVE-2021-33739  (CVSS score: 8.4) - Microsoft DWM Core Library Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability CVE-2021-31199  (CVSS score: 5.2) - Microsoft Enhanced Cryptographic Provider Elevation

Microsoft on Tuesday rolled out its scheduled  monthly security update  with patches for 55 security flaws affecting Windows, Exchange Server, Internet Explorer, Office, Hyper-V, Visual Studio, and Skype for Business. Of these 55 bugs, four are rated as Critical, 50 are rated as Important, and one is listed as Moderate in severity. Three of the vulnerabilities are publicly known, although, unlike  last month , none of them are under active exploitation at the time of release. The most critical of the flaws addressed is  CVE-2021-31166 , a wormable remote code execution vulnerability in the HTTP protocol stack. The issue, which could allow an unauthenticated attacker to send a specially crafted packet to a targeted server, is rated 9.8 out of a maximum of 10 on the CVSS scale. Another vulnerability of note is a remote code execution flaw in Hyper-V ( CVE-2021-28476 ), which also scores the highest severity among all flaws patched this month with a CVSS rating of 9.9. "This i

Google on Tuesday released a new version of Chrome web-browsing software for Windows, Mac, and Linux with patches for two newly discovered security vulnerabilities for both of which it says exploits exist in the wild, allowing attackers to engage in active exploitation. One of the two flaws concerns an insufficient validation of untrusted input in its V8 JavaScript rendering engine (CVE-2021-21220), which was demonstrated by Dataflow Security's Bruno Keith and Niklas Baumstark at the  Pwn2Own 2021  hacking contest last week. While Google moved to fix the flaw quickly, security researcher Rajvardhan Agarwal published a  working exploit  over the weekend by reverse-engineering the patch that the Chromium team pushed to the open-source component, a factor that may have played a crucial role in the release. UPDATE:   Agarwal, in an email to The Hacker News, confirmed that there's one more vulnerability affecting Chromium-based browsers that has been patched in the latest vers

A critical vulnerability in the VMware Carbon Black Cloud Workload appliance could be exploited to bypass authentication and take control of vulnerable systems. Tracked as CVE-2021-21982, the flaw is rated 9.1 out of a maximum of 10 in the CVSS scoring system and affects all versions of the product prior to 1.0.1.  Carbon Black Cloud Workload is a data center security product from VMware that aims to protect critical servers and workloads hosted on vSphere, the company's cloud-computing virtualization platform. "A URL on the administrative interface of the VMware Carbon Black Cloud Workload appliance can be manipulated to bypass authentication," VMware  said  in its advisory, thereby allowing an adversary with network access to the interface to gain access to the administration API of the appliance. Armed with the access, a malicious actor can then view and alter  administrative configuration settings , the company added. In addition to releasing a fix for CVE-2021

Merely weeks after releasing out-of-band patches for iOS, iPadOS, macOS and watchOS, Apple has issued yet another security update for iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch to fix a critical zero-day weakness that it says is being actively exploited in the wild. Tracked as CVE-2021-1879 , the vulnerability relates to a WebKit flaw that could enable adversaries to process maliciously crafted web content that may result in universal cross-site scripting attacks. "This issue was addressed by improved management of object lifetimes," the iPhone maker noted. Apple has credited Clement Lecigne and Billy Leonard of Google's Threat Analysis Group for discovering and reporting the issue. While details of the flaw have not been disclosed, the company said it's aware of reports that CVE-2021-1879 may have been actively exploited. Updates are available for the following devices: iOS 12.5.2  - Phone 5s, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPad Air, iPad mini 2, iPad mini 3, and iPod touch (6t

Microsoft on Monday released a one-click mitigation software that applies all the necessary countermeasures to secure vulnerable environments against the ongoing widespread  ProxyLogon Exchange Server  cyberattacks. Called Exchange On-premises Mitigation Tool ( EOMT ), the PowerShell-based script serves to mitigate against current known attacks using CVE-2021-26855, scan the Exchange Server using the  Microsoft Safety Scanner  for any deployed web shells, and attempt to remediate the detected compromises. "This new tool is designed as an interim mitigation for customers who are unfamiliar with the patch/update process or who have not yet applied the on-premises Exchange security update," Microsoft  said . The development comes in the wake of indiscriminate attacks against unpatched Exchange Servers across the world by more than ten advanced persistent threat actors — most of the government-backed cyberespionage groups — to plant backdoors, coin miners, and  ransomware ,

For the first patch Tuesday of 2021, Microsoft released  security updates  addressing a total of 83 flaws spanning as many as 11 products and services, including an actively exploited zero-day vulnerability. The latest security patches cover Microsoft Windows, Edge browser, ChakraCore, Office and Microsoft Office Services, and Web Apps, Visual Studio, Microsoft Malware Protection Engine, .NET Core, ASP .NET, and Azure. Of these 83 bugs, 10 are listed as Critical, and 73 are listed as Important in severity. The most severe of the issues is a remote code execution (RCE) flaw in Microsoft Defender ( CVE-2021-1647 ) that could allow attackers to infect targeted systems with arbitrary code. Microsoft Malware Protection Engine (mpengine.dll) provides the scanning, detection, and cleaning capabilities for Microsoft Defender antivirus and antispyware software. The last version of the software affected by the flaw is 1.1.17600.5, before it was addressed in version 1.1.17700.4. The bug is

Google's Project Zero team has made public details of an improperly patched zero-day security vulnerability in Windows print spooler API that could be leveraged by a bad actor to execute arbitrary code. Details of the unpatched flaw were revealed publicly after Microsoft failed to rectify it within 90 days of responsible disclosure on September 24. Originally tracked as  CVE-2020-0986 , the flaw concerns an elevation of privilege exploit in the GDI Print /  Print Spooler  API ("splwow64.exe") that was reported to Microsoft by an anonymous user working with Trend Micro's Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) back in late December 2019. But with no patch in sight for about six months, ZDI ended up posting a public  advisory  as a zero-day on May 19 earlier this year, after which it was  exploited  in the wild in a campaign dubbed " Operation PowerFall " against an unnamed South Korean company. "splwow64.exe" is a Windows core system binary that allows 32-b

Multiple botnets are targeting thousands of publicly exposed and still unpatched Oracle WebLogic servers to deploy crypto miners and steal sensitive information from infected systems. The attacks are taking aim at a recently patched WebLogic Server vulnerability, which was released by Oracle as part of its  October 2020 Critical Patch Update  and subsequently again in November ( CVE-2020-14750 ) in the form of an out-of-band security patch. As of writing, about 3,000 Oracle WebLogic servers are accessible on the Internet-based on stats from the Shodan search engine. Oracle  WebLogic  is a platform for developing, deploying, and running enterprise Java applications in any cloud environment as well as on-premises. The flaw, which is tracked as CVE-2020-14882, has a CVSS score of 9.8 out of a maximum rating of 10 and affects WebLogic Server versions 10.3.6.0.0, 12.1.3.0.0, 12.2.1.3.0, 12.2.1.4.0, and 14.1.1.0.0. Although the issue has been addressed, the release of  proof-of-concep

Cisco has published multiple security advisories concerning critical flaws in Cisco Security Manager (CSM) a week after the networking equipment maker quietly released patches with version 4.22 of the platform. The development comes after Code White researcher Florian Hauser (frycos) yesterday publicly disclosed proof-of-concept ( PoC ) code for as many as 12 security vulnerabilities affecting the  web interface of CSM  that makes it possible for an unauthenticated attacker to achieve remote code execution (RCE) attacks. The flaws were responsibly reported to Cisco's Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) three months ago, on July 13. "Since Cisco PSIRT became unresponsive and the published release 4.22 still doesn't mention any of the vulnerabilities,"  claimed frycos  in a tweet, citing the reasons for going public with the PoCs yesterday. Cisco Security Manager  is an end-to-end enterprise solution that allows organizations to enforce access policies