privilege escalation | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

The Russia-linked nation-state threat actor tracked as  APT28  weaponized a security flaw in the Microsoft Windows Print Spooler component to deliver a previously unknown custom malware called GooseEgg. The post-compromise tool, which is said to have been used since at least June 2020 and possibly as early as April 2019, leveraged a now-patched flaw that allowed for privilege escalation (CVE-2022-38028, CVSS score: 7.8). It was  addressed  by Microsoft as part of updates released in October 2022, with the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) credited for reporting the flaw at the time. According to new findings from the tech giant's threat intelligence team,  APT28  – also called Fancy Bear and Forest Blizzard (formerly Strontium) – weaponized the bug in attacks targeting Ukrainian, Western European, and North American government, non-governmental, education, and transportation sector organizations. "Forest Blizzard has used the tool [...] to exploit the CVE-2022-38028 vu

Threat actors behind the Akira ransomware group have extorted approximately $42 million in illicit proceeds after breaching the networks of more than 250 victims as of January 1, 2024. "Since March 2023, Akira ransomware has impacted a wide range of businesses and critical infrastructure entities in North America, Europe, and Australia," cybersecurity agencies from the Netherlands and the U.S., along with Europol's European Cybercrime Centre (EC3),  said  in a joint alert. "In April 2023, following an initial focus on Windows systems, Akira threat actors deployed a Linux variant targeting VMware ESXi virtual machines." The double-extortion group has been observed using a C++ variant of the locker in the early stages, before shifting to a Rust-based code as of August 2023. It's worth noting that the e-crime actor is  completely different  from the Akira ransomware family that was active in 2017. Initial access to target networks is facilitated by means o

The introduction of Open AI's ChatGPT was a defining moment for the software industry, touching off a GenAI race with its November 2022 release. SaaS vendors are now rushing to upgrade tools with enhanced productivity capabilities that are driven by generative AI. Among a wide range of uses, GenAI tools make it easier for developers to build software, assist sales teams in mundane email writing, help marketers produce unique content at low cost, and enable teams and creatives to brainstorm new ideas.  Recent significant GenAI product launches include Microsoft 365 Copilot, GitHub Copilot, and Salesforce Einstein GPT. Notably, these GenAI tools from leading SaaS providers are paid enhancements, a clear sign that no SaaS provider will want to miss out on cashing in on the GenAI transformation. Google will soon launch its SGE "Search Generative Experience" platform for premium AI-generated summaries rather than a list of websites.  At this pace, it's just a matter of a short time befo

Threat actors are actively exploiting critical vulnerabilities in OpenMetadata to gain unauthorized access to Kubernetes workloads and leverage them for cryptocurrency mining activity. That's according to the Microsoft Threat Intelligence team, which  said  the flaws have been weaponized since the start of April 2024. OpenMetadata is an  open-source platform  that operates as a metadata management tool, offering a unified solution for data asset discovery, observability, and governance. The flaws in question – all discovered and credited to security researcher Alvaro Muñoz – are listed below - CVE-2024-28847  (CVSS score: 8.8) - A Spring Expression Language (SpEL) injection vulnerability in PUT /api/v1/events/subscriptions (fixed in version 1.2.4) CVE-2024-28848  (CVSS score: 8.8) - A SpEL injection vulnerability in GET /api/v1/policies/validation/condition/<expr> (fixed in version 1.2.4) CVE-2024-28253  (CVSS score: 8.8) - A SpEL injection vulnerability in PUT /api/v

The threat actor known as  Muddled Libra  has been observed actively targeting software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications and cloud service provider (CSP) environments in a bid to exfiltrate sensitive data. "Organizations often store a variety of data in SaaS applications and use services from CSPs," Palo Alto Networks Unit 42  said  in a report published last week. "The threat actors have begun attempting to leverage some of this data to assist with their attack progression, and to use for extortion when trying to monetize their work." Muddled Libra, also called Scatter Swine, Scattered Spider, Starfraud, and UNC3944, is a notorious cybercriminal group that has leveraged sophisticated social engineering techniques to gain initial access to target networks.  "Scattered Spider threat actors have historically evaded detection on target networks by using living off the land techniques and allowlisted applications to navigate victim networks, as well as frequen

To minimize the risk of privilege misuse, a trend in the privileged access management (PAM) solution market involves implementing just-in-time (JIT) privileged access. This approach to  privileged identity management  aims to mitigate the risks associated with prolonged high-level access by granting privileges temporarily and only when necessary, rather than providing users with continuous high-level privileges. By adopting this strategy, organizations can enhance security, minimize the window of opportunity for potential attackers and ensure that users access privileged resources only when necessary.  What is JIT and why is it important?   JIT privileged access provisioning  involves granting privileged access to users on a temporary basis, aligning with the concept of least privilege. This principle provides users with only the minimum level of access required to perform their tasks, and only for the amount of time required to do so. One of the key advantages of JIT provisioning

Microsoft has released security updates for the month of April 2024 to remediate a record  149 flaws , two of which have come under active exploitation in the wild. Of the 149 flaws, three are rated Critical, 142 are rated Important, three are rated Moderate, and one is rated Low in severity. The update is aside from  21 vulnerabilities  that the company addressed in its Chromium-based Edge browser following the release of the  March 2024 Patch Tuesday fixes . The two shortcomings that have come under active exploitation are below - CVE-2024-26234  (CVSS score: 6.7) - Proxy Driver Spoofing Vulnerability CVE-2024-29988  (CVSS score: 8.8) - SmartScreen Prompt Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability While Microsoft's own advisory provides no information about CVE-2024-26234, cybersecurity firm Sophos said it discovered in December 2023 a malicious executable ("Catalog.exe" or "Catalog Authentication Client Service") that's  signed  by a valid Microsoft Wi

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has  added  a security flaw impacting Microsoft Sharepoint Server to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities ( KEV ) catalog based on evidence of active exploitation in the wild. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2023-24955 (CVSS score: 7.2), is a critical remote code execution flaw that allows an authenticated attacker with Site Owner privileges to execute arbitrary code. "In a network-based attack, an authenticated attacker as a Site Owner could execute code remotely on the SharePoint Server," Microsoft  said  in an advisory. The flaw was addressed by Microsoft as part of its  Patch Tuesday updates  for May 2023. The development comes more than two months after CISA  added  CVE-2023-29357, a privilege escalation flaw in SharePoint Server, to its KEV catalog. It's worth pointing out that an exploit chain combining CVE-2023-29357 and CVE-2023-24955 was demonstrated by StarLabs SG at the Pwn2Own Vancouver h

A now-patched security flaw in the Microsoft Edge web browser could have been abused to install arbitrary extensions on users' systems and carry out malicious actions.  "This flaw could have allowed an attacker to exploit a private API, initially intended for marketing purposes, to covertly install additional browser extensions with broad permissions without the user's knowledge," Guardio Labs security researcher Oleg Zaytsev  said  in a new report shared with The Hacker News. Tracked as  CVE-2024-21388  (CVSS score: 6.5), it was addressed by Microsoft in Edge stable version 121.0.2277.83 released on January 25, 2024, following responsible disclosure in November 2023. The Windows maker credited both Zaytsev and Jun Kokatsu for reporting the issue. "An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could gain the privileges needed to install an extension," Microsoft said in an advisory for the flaw, adding it "could lead to a browser sandbo

WordPress users of miniOrange's Malware Scanner and Web Application Firewall plugins are being urged to delete them from their websites following the discovery of a critical security flaw. The flaw, tracked as  CVE-2024-2172 , is rated 9.8 out of a maximum of 10 on the CVSS scoring system and discovered by Stiofan . It impacts the following versions of the two plugins - Malware Scanner  (versions <= 4.7.2) Web Application Firewall  (versions <= 2.1.1) It's worth noting that the plugins have been permanently closed by the maintainers as of March 7, 2024. While Malware Scanner has over 10,000 active installs, Web Application Firewall has more than 300 active installations. "This vulnerability makes it possible for an unauthenticated attacker to grant themselves administrative privileges by updating the user password," Wordfence  reported  last week.  The issue is the result of a missing capability check in the function mo_wpns_init() that enables an unau

Microsoft on Tuesday released its monthly security update,  addressing 61 different security flaws  spanning its software, including two critical issues impacting Windows Hyper-V that could lead to denial-of-service (DoS) and remote code execution. Of the 61 vulnerabilities, two are rated Critical, 58 are rated Important, and one is rated Low in severity. None of the flaws are listed as publicly known or under active attack at the time of the release, but six of them have been tagged with an "Exploitation More Likely" assessment. The fixes are in addition to  17 security flaws  that have been patched in the company's Chromium-based Edge browser since the release of the  February 2024 Patch Tuesday updates . Topping the list of critical shortcomings are  CVE-2024-21407  and  CVE-2024-21408 , which affect Hyper-V and could result in remote code execution and a DoS condition, respectively. Microsoft's update also addresses privilege escalation flaws in the Azure Kub

Cisco has released patches to address a high-severity security flaw impacting its Secure Client software that could be exploited by a threat actor to open a VPN session with that of a targeted user. The networking equipment company described the vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-20337 (CVSS score: 8.2), as allowing an unauthenticated, remote attacker to conduct a carriage return line feed ( CRLF ) injection attack against a user. Arising as a result of insufficient validation of user-supplied input, a threat actor could leverage the flaw to trick a user into clicking on a specially crafted link while establishing a VPN session. "A successful exploit could allow the attacker to execute arbitrary script code in the browser or access sensitive, browser-based information, including a valid SAML token," the company  said  in an advisory. "The attacker could then use the token to establish a remote access VPN session with the privileges of the affected user. Individual hosts and servi

The notorious Lazarus Group actors exploited a recently patched privilege escalation flaw in the Windows Kernel as a zero-day to obtain kernel-level access and disable security software on compromised hosts. The vulnerability in question is  CVE-2024-21338  (CVSS score: 7.8), which can permit an attacker to gain SYSTEM privileges. It was resolved by Microsoft earlier this month as part of  Patch Tuesday updates . "To exploit this vulnerability, an attacker would first have to log on to the system," Microsoft  said . "An attacker could then run a specially crafted application that could exploit the vulnerability and take control of an affected system." While there were no indications of active exploitation of CVE-2024-21338 at the time of the release of the updates, Redmond on Wednesday revised its "Exploitability assessment" for the flaw to "Exploitation Detected."  It's currently not clear when the attacks took place, but the vulnerability

A security vulnerability has been disclosed in the LiteSpeed Cache plugin for WordPress that could enable unauthenticated users to escalate their privileges. Tracked as  CVE-2023-40000 , the vulnerability was addressed in October 2023 in version 5.7.0.1. "This plugin suffers from unauthenticated site-wide stored [cross-site scripting] vulnerability and could allow any unauthenticated user from stealing sensitive information to, in this case, privilege escalation on the WordPress site by performing a single HTTP request," Patchstack researcher Rafie Muhammad  said . LiteSpeed Cache , which is used to improve site performance, has more than five million installations. The latest version of the plugin is 6.1, which was released on February 5, 2024. The WordPress security company said CVE-2023-40000 is the result of a lack of user input sanitization and  escaping output . The vulnerability is rooted in a function named update_cdn_status() and can be reproduced in a default

Microsoft on Wednesday acknowledged that a newly disclosed critical security flaw in Exchange Server has been actively exploited in the wild, a day after it released fixes for the vulnerability as part of its  Patch Tuesday updates . Tracked as  CVE-2024-21410  (CVSS score: 9.8), the issue has been described as a case of privilege escalation impacting the Exchange Server. "An attacker could target an NTLM client such as Outlook with an NTLM credentials-leaking type vulnerability," the company  said  in an advisory published this week. "The leaked credentials can then be relayed against the Exchange server to gain privileges as the victim client and to perform operations on the Exchange server on the victim's behalf." Successful exploitation of the flaw could permit an attacker to relay a user's leaked Net-NTLMv2 hash against a susceptible Exchange Server and authenticate as the user, Redmond added. The tech giant, in an update to its bulletin, revised