The Hacker News - Cybersecurity News and Analysis: privilege escalation

VMware has issued patches to contain  two security flaws  impacting Workspace ONE Access, Identity Manager, and vRealize Automation that could be exploited to backdoor enterprise networks. The first of the two flaws, tracked as CVE-2022-22972 (CVSS score: 9.8), concerns an authentication bypass that could enable an actor with network access to the UI to gain administrative access without prior authentication. CVE-2022-22973 (CVSS score: 7.8), the other bug, is a case of local privilege escalation that could enable an attacker with local access to elevate privileges to the "root" user on vulnerable virtual appliances. "It is extremely important that you quickly take steps to patch or mitigate these issues in on-premises deployments," VMware  said . The disclosure follows a  warning  from the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA) that advanced persistent threat (APT) groups are exploiting CVE-2022-22954 and CVE-2022-22960 — two other VMware flaws t

Two high-severity security vulnerabilities, which went undetected for several years, have been discovered in a  legitimate driver  that's part of Avast and AVG antivirus solutions. "These vulnerabilities allow attackers to escalate privileges enabling them to disable security products, overwrite system components, corrupt the operating system, or perform malicious operations unimpeded," SentinelOne researcher Kasif Dekel  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. Tracked as CVE-2022-26522 and CVE-2022-26523, the flaws reside in a legitimate anti-rootkit kernel driver named aswArPot.sys and are said to have been introduced in Avast version 12.1, which was released in June 2016. Specifically, the shortcomings are rooted in a socket connection handler in the kernel driver that could lead to privilege escalation by running code in the kernel from a non-administrator user, potentially causing the operating system to crash and display a blue screen of death ( BSoD ) e

Cisco Systems on Wednesday shipped security patches to contain three flaws impacting its Enterprise NFV Infrastructure Software ( NFVIS ) that could permit an attacker to fully compromise and take control over the hosts. Tracked as CVE-2022-20777, CVE-2022-20779, and CVE-2022-20780, the vulnerabilities "could allow an attacker to escape from the guest virtual machine (VM) to the host machine, inject commands that execute at the root level, or leak system data from the host to the VM," the company  said . Credited for discovering and reporting the issues are Cyrille Chatras, Pierre Denouel, and Loïc Restoux of Orange Group. Updates have been released in version 4.7.1. The networking equipment company said the flaws affect Cisco Enterprise NFVIS in the default configuration. Details of the three bugs are as follows - CVE-2022-20777  (CVSS score: 9.9) - An issue with insufficient guest restrictions that allows an authenticated, remote attacker to escape from the guest VM

Microsoft on Tuesday disclosed a set of two privilege escalation vulnerabilities in the Linux operating system that could potentially allow threat actors to carry out an array of nefarious activities. Collectively called " Nimbuspwn ," the flaws "can be chained together to gain root privileges on Linux systems, allowing attackers to deploy payloads, like a root backdoor, and perform other malicious actions via arbitrary root code execution," Jonathan Bar Or of the Microsoft 365 Defender Research Team  said  in a report. On top of that, the defects — tracked as  CVE-2022-29799 and CVE-2022-29800  — could also be weaponized as a vector for root access to deploy more sophisticated threats such as ransomware. The vulnerabilities are rooted in a  systemd  component called  networkd-dispatcher , a  daemon program  for the network manager system service that's designed to dispatch network status changes. Specifically, they relate to a combination of  directory t

The "hotpatch" released by Amazon Web Services (AWS) in response to the  Log4Shell  vulnerabilities could be leveraged for container escape and privilege escalation, allowing an attacker to seize control of the underlying host. "Aside from containers, unprivileged processes can also exploit the patch to escalate privileges and gain root code execution," Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 researcher Yuval Avrahami  said  in a report published this week. The issues —  CVE-2021-3100 ,  CVE-2021-3101 ,  CVE-2022-0070 , and  CVE-2022-0071  (CVSS scores: 8.8) — affect the  hotfix solutions  shipped by AWS, and stem from the fact that they are designed to search for Java processes and patch them against the Log4j flaw on the fly but without ensuring that the new Java processes are run within the restrictions imposed on the container. "Any process running a binary named 'java' – inside or outside of a container – is considered a candidate for the hot patch,"

Multiple security vulnerabilities have been disclosed in Canonical's  Snap  software packaging and deployment system, the most critical of which can be exploited to escalate privilege to gain root privileges. Snaps are self-contained application packages that are designed to work on operating systems that use the Linux kernel and can be installed using a tool called snapd. Tracked as  CVE-2021-44731 , the issue concerns a privilege escalation flaw in the  snap-confine  function, a program used internally by snapd to construct the execution environment for snap applications. The shortcoming is rated 7.8 on the CVSS scoring system. "Successful exploitation of this vulnerability allows any unprivileged user to gain root privileges on the vulnerable host," Bharat Jogi, director of vulnerability and threat research at Qualys,  said , adding the weakness could be abused to "obtain full root privileges on default installations of Ubuntu." Red Hat, in an independ

A 12-year-old security vulnerability has been disclosed in a system utility called Polkit that grants attackers root privileges on Linux systems, even as a proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit has emerged in the wild merely hours after technical details of the bug became public. Dubbed "PwnKit" by cybersecurity firm Qualys, the weakness impacts a component in polkit called pkexec, a program that's installed by default on every major Linux distribution such as Ubunti, Debian, Fedora, and CentOS. Polkit  (formerly called PolicyKit ) is a toolkit for controlling system-wide privileges in Unix-like operating systems, and provides a mechanism for non-privileged processes to communicate with privileged processes. "This vulnerability allows any unprivileged user to gain full root privileges on a vulnerable host by exploiting this vulnerability in its default configuration," Bharat Jogi, director of vulnerability and threat research at Qualys,  said , adding it "has

Attackers are actively making efforts to exploit a new variant of a recently disclosed privilege escalation vulnerability to potentially execute arbitrary code on fully-patched systems, once again demonstrating how adversaries move quickly to weaponize a publicly available exploit. Cisco Talos  disclosed  that it "detected malware samples in the wild that are attempting to take advantage of this vulnerability." Tracked as  CVE-2021-41379  and discovered by security researcher Abdelhamid Naceri, the elevation of privilege flaw affecting the Windows Installer software component was originally resolved as part of Microsoft's  Patch Tuesday updates  for November 2021. However, in what's a case of an insufficient patch, Naceri found that it was not only possible to bypass the fix implemented by Microsoft but also  achieve  local privilege escalation via a newly discovered zero-day bug. The proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit, dubbed " InstallerFileTakeOver ," w

A now-patched vulnerability affecting Oracle VM VirtualBox could be potentially exploited by an adversary to compromise the hypervisor and cause a denial-of-service (DoS) condition. "Easily exploitable vulnerability allows high privileged attacker with logon to the infrastructure where Oracle VM VirtualBox executes to compromise Oracle VM VirtualBox," the advisory  reads . "Successful attacks of this vulnerability can result in unauthorized ability to cause a hang or frequently repeatable crash (complete DoS) of Oracle VM VirtualBox" Tracked as  CVE-2021-2442  (CVSS score: 6.0), the flaw affects all versions of the product prior to 6.1.24. SentinelLabs researcher Max Van Amerongen has been credited with discovering and reporting the issue, following which  fixes have been rolled out  by Oracle as part of its Critical Patch Update for July 2021. Oracle VM  VirtualBox  is an open-source and cross-platform hypervisor and desktop virtualization software that enabl

Microsoft's Windows 10 and the upcoming Windows 11 versions have been found vulnerable to a new local privilege escalation vulnerability that permits users with low-level permissions access Windows system files, in turn, enabling them to unmask the operating system installation password and even decrypt private keys. The vulnerability has been nicknamed "SeriousSAM." "Starting with Windows 10 build 1809, non-administrative users are granted access to SAM, SYSTEM, and SECURITY registry hive files," CERT Coordination Center (CERT/CC) said in a  vulnerability note  published Monday. "This can allow for local privilege escalation (LPE)." The operating system configuration files in question are as follows - c:\Windows\System32\config\sam c:\Windows\System32\config\system c:\Windows\System32\config\security Microsoft, which is tracking the vulnerability under the identifier  CVE-2021-36934 , acknowledged the issue, but has yet to roll out a patch, o

PC maker Dell has issued an update to fix multiple critical privilege escalation vulnerabilities that went undetected since 2009, potentially allowing attackers to gain kernel-mode privileges and cause a denial-of-service condition. The issues, reported to Dell by researchers from SentinelOne on Dec. 1, 2020, reside in a firmware update driver named "dbutil_2_3.sys" that comes pre-installed on its devices. Hundreds of millions of desktops, laptops, notebooks, and tablets manufactured by the company are said to be vulnerable. "Dell dbutil_2_3.sys driver contains an insufficient access control vulnerability which may lead to escalation of privileges, denial-of-service, or information disclosure. Local authenticated user access is required," Dell  said  in an advisory. All five separate flaws have been assigned the CVE identifier CVE-2021-21551 with a CVSS score of 8.8. A breakdown of the shortcomings is as follows -  CVE-2021-21551: Local Elevation Of Privilege

A popular jailbreaking tool called "unc0ver" has been updated to support iOS 14.3 and earlier releases, thereby making it possible to unlock almost every single iPhone model using a vulnerability that Apple in January disclosed was actively exploited in the wild. The latest release, dubbed unc0ver v6.0.0, was  released  on Sunday, according to its lead developer Pwn20wnd, expanding its compatibility to jailbreak any device running iOS 11.0 through iOS 14.3 using a kernel vulnerability, including iOS 12.4.9-12.5.1, 13.5.1-13.7, and 14.0-14.3. Tracked as  CVE-2021-1782 , the flaw is a privilege escalation vulnerability in the kernel stemming from a race condition that could cause a malicious application to elevate its privileges. "We wrote our own exploit based on CVE-2021-1782 for #unc0ver to achieve optimal exploit speed and stability," Pwn20wnd  said  in a separate tweet. The vulnerability has since been addressed by Apple as part of its iOS and iPadOS 14.4 u

Cybersecurity researchers today disclosed details of security vulnerabilities found in popular antivirus solutions that could enable attackers to elevate their privileges, thereby helping malware sustain its foothold on the compromised systems. According to a report published by CyberArk researcher Eran Shimony today and shared with The Hacker News, the high privileges often associated with anti-malware products render them more vulnerable to exploitation via file manipulation attacks, resulting in a scenario where malware gains elevated permissions on the system. The bugs impact a wide range of antivirus solutions, including those from Kaspersky, McAfee, Symantec, Fortinet, Check Point, Trend Micro, Avira, and Microsoft Defender, each of which has been fixed by the respective vendor. Chief among the flaws is the ability to delete files from arbitrary locations, allowing the attacker to delete any file in the system, as well as a file corruption vulnerability that permits a bad ac

Remember Strandhogg? A security vulnerability affecting Android that malicious apps can exploit to masquerade as any other app installed on a targeted device to display fake interfaces to the users, tricking them into giving away sensitive information. Late last year, at the time of its public disclosure, researchers also confirmed that some attackers were already exploiting the flaw in the wild to steal users' banking and other login credentials, as well as to spy on their activities. The same team of Norwegian cybersecurity researchers today unveiled details of a new critical vulnerability (CVE-2020-0096) affecting the Android operating system that could allow attackers to carry out a much more sophisticated version of Strandhogg attack. Dubbed ' Strandhogg 2.0 ,' the new vulnerability affects all Android devices, except those running the latest version, Android Q / 10, of the mobile operating system—which, unfortunately, is running on only 15-20% of the total

Joe Vennix of Apple security has found another significant vulnerability in sudo utility that under a specific configuration could allow low privileged users or malicious programs to execute arbitrary commands with administrative ('root') privileges on Linux or macOS systems. Sudo is one of the most important, powerful, and commonly used utilities that comes as a core command pre-installed on macOS and almost every UNIX or Linux-based operating system. Sudo has been designed to let users run apps or commands with the privileges of a different user without switching environments. Sudo Vulnerability (CVE-2019-18634) The newly discovered privilege escalation vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2019-18634 , in question stems from a stack-based buffer overflow issue that resides in Sudo versions before 1.8.26. According to Vennix, the flaw can only be exploited when the " pwfeedback " option is enabled in the sudoers configuration file, a feature that provides visua

Watch out! If you have any of the below-mentioned file managers and photography apps installed on your Android phone—even if downloaded from the official Google Store store⁠—you have been hacked and being tracked. These newly detected malicious Android apps are Camero , FileCrypt , and callCam that are believed to be linked to Sidewinder APT, a sophisticated hacking group specialized in cyber espionage attacks. According to cybersecurity researchers at Trend Micro, these apps were exploiting a critical use-after-free vulnerability in Android at least since March last year⁠—that's 7 months before the same flaw was first discovered as zero-day when Google researcher analysed a separate attack developed by Israeli surveillance vendor NSO Group. "We speculate that these apps have been active since March 2019 based on the certificate information on one of the apps," the researchers said . Tracked as CVE-2019-2215 , the vulnerability is a local privilege escalation

OpenBSD, an open-source operating system built with security in mind, has been found vulnerable to four new high-severity security vulnerabilities, one of which is an old-school type authentication bypass vulnerability in BSD Auth framework. The other three vulnerabilities are privilege escalation issues that could allow local users or malicious software to gain privileges of an auth group, root, as well as of other users, respectively. The vulnerabilities were discovered and reported by Qualys Research Labs earlier this week, in response to which OpenBSD developers released security patches for OpenBSD 6.5 and OpenBSD 6.6 just yesterday—that's in less than 40 hours. Here's a brief explanation of all four security vulnerabilities in OpenBSD—a free and open-source BSD-based Unix-like operating system—along with their assigned CVE identifiers OpenBSD Authentication Bypass (CVE-2019-19521) The authentication bypass vulnerability resides in the way OpenBSD's auth

Attention Linux Users! A new vulnerability has been discovered in Sudo —one of the most important, powerful, and commonly used utilities that comes as a core command installed on almost every UNIX and Linux-based operating system. The vulnerability in question is a sudo security policy bypass issue that could allow a malicious user or a program to execute arbitrary commands as root on a targeted Linux system even when the "sudoers configuration" explicitly disallows the root access. Sudo, stands for "superuser do," is a system command that allows a user to run applications or commands with the privileges of a different user without switching environments—most often, for running commands as the root user. By default on most Linux distributions, the ALL keyword in RunAs specification in /etc/sudoers file, as shown in the screenshot, allows all users in the admin or sudo groups to run any command as any valid user on the system. However, since privilege separ

If you own a device, or a hardware component, manufactured by ASUS, Toshiba, Intel, NVIDIA, Huawei, or other 15 other vendors listed below, you're probably screwed. A team of security researchers has discovered high-risk security vulnerabilities in more than 40 drivers from at least 20 different vendors that could allow attackers to gain most privileged permission on the system and hide malware in a way that remains undetected over time, sometimes for years. For sophisticated attackers, maintaining persistence after compromising a system is one of the most important tasks, and to achieve this, existing hardware vulnerabilities sometimes play an important role. One such component is a device driver, commonly known as a driver or hardware driver, a software program that controls a particular type of hardware device, helping it to communicate with the computer's operating system properly. Since device drivers sit between the hardware and the operating system itself and in

An anonymous security researcher going by the name of SandboxEscaper today publicly shared a second zero-day exploit that can be used to bypass a recently patched elevation of privilege vulnerability in the Microsoft Windows operating system. SandboxEscaper is known for publicly dropping zero-day exploits for unpatched Windows vulnerabilities. In the past year, the hacker has disclosed over half a dozen zero-day vulnerabilities in Windows OS without actually bothering to make Microsoft aware of the issues first. Just two weeks ago, the hacker disclosed four new Windows exploits , one of which was an exploit that could allow attackers to bypass a patched elevation of privilege vulnerability (CVE-2019-0841) in Windows that existed when Windows AppX Deployment Service (AppXSVC) improperly handles hard links. Now, the hacker claims to have found a new way to bypass Microsoft security patch for the same vulnerability, allowing a specially crafted malicious application to escalate its