remote code execution | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

A critical security flaw in the Bricks theme for WordPress is being actively exploited by threat actors to run arbitrary PHP code on susceptible installations. The flaw, tracked as CVE-2024-25600 (CVSS score: 9.8), enables unauthenticated attackers to achieve remote code execution. It impacts all versions of the Bricks up to and including 1.9.6. It has been addressed by the theme developers in  version 1.9.6.1  released on February 13, 2024, merely days after WordPress security provider Snicco reported the flaw on February 10. While a proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit has not been released, technical details have been  released  by both Snicco and Patchstack, noting that the underlying vulnerable code exists in the prepare_query_vars_from_settings() function. Specifically, it concerns the use of security tokens called "nonces" for verifying permissions, which can then be used to pass arbitrary commands for execution, effectively allowing a threat actor to seize control of a

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

It comes as no surprise that today's cyber threats are orders of magnitude more complex than those of the past. And the ever-evolving tactics that attackers use demand the adoption of better, more holistic and consolidated ways to meet this non-stop challenge. Security teams constantly look for ways to reduce risk while improving security posture, but many approaches offer piecemeal solutions – zeroing in on one particular element of the evolving threat landscape challenge – missing the forest for the trees.  In the last few years, Exposure Management has become known as a comprehensive way of reigning in the chaos, giving organizations a true fighting chance to reduce risk and improve posture. In this article I'll cover what Exposure Management is, how it stacks up against some alternative approaches and why building an Exposure Management program should be on  your 2024 to-do list. What is Exposure Management?  Exposure Management is the systematic identification, evaluation,

The maintainers of shim have released  version 15.8  to address six security flaws, including a critical bug that could pave the way for remote code execution under specific circumstances. Tracked as  CVE-2023-40547  (CVSS score: 9.8), the vulnerability could be exploited to achieve a Secure Boot bypass. Bill Demirkapi of the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) has been  credited  with discovering and reporting the bug. Major Linux distributions that use shim such as Debian , Red Hat , SUSE , and Ubuntu have all released advisories for the security flaw. "The shim's http boot support (httpboot.c) trusts attacker-controlled values when parsing an HTTP response, leading to a completely controlled out-of-bounds write primitive," Oracle's Alan Coopersmith  noted  in a message shared on the Open Source Security mailing list oss-security. Demirkapi, in a  post  shared on X (formerly Twitter) late last month, said the vulnerability "exists in every Linux bo

The decentralized social network Mastodon has disclosed a critical security flaw that enables malicious actors to impersonate and take over any account. "Due to insufficient origin validation in all Mastodon, attackers can impersonate and take over any remote account," the maintainers said in a terse advisory. The vulnerability, tracked as  CVE-2024-23832 , has a severity rating of 9.4 out of a maximum of 10. Security researcher  arcanicanis  has been credited with discovering and reporting it. It has been described as an "origin validation error" ( CWE-346 ), which can typically allow an attacker to "access any functionality that is inadvertently accessible to the source." Every Mastodon version prior to 3.5.17 is vulnerable, as are 4.0.x versions before 4.0.13, 4.1.x versions before 4.1.13, and 4.2.x versions before 4.2.5. Mastodon said it's withholding additional technical specifics about the flaw until February 15, 2024, to give  admins  ampl

Juniper Networks has released out-of-band updates to  address high-severity flaws  in SRX Series and EX Series that could be exploited by a threat actor to take control of susceptible systems. The vulnerabilities, tracked as  CVE-2024-21619 and CVE-2024-21620 , are rooted in the J-Web component and impact all versions of Junos OS. Two other shortcomings, CVE-2023-36846 and CVE-2023-36851, were  previously disclosed  by the company in August 2023. CVE-2024-21619  (CVSS score: 5.3) - A missing authentication vulnerability that could lead to exposure of sensitive configuration information CVE-2024-21620  (CVSS score: 8.8) - A cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability that could lead to the execution of arbitrary commands with the target's permissions by means of a specially crafted request Cybersecurity firm watchTowr Labs has been  credited  with discovering and reporting the issues. The two vulnerabilities have been addressed in the following versions - CVE-2024-21619  - 20.

The maintainers of the open-source continuous integration/continuous delivery and deployment (CI/CD) automation software Jenkins have resolved nine security flaws, including a critical bug that, if successfully exploited, could result in remote code execution (RCE). The issue, assigned the CVE identifier  CVE-2024-23897 , has been described as an arbitrary file read vulnerability through the built-in command line interface ( CLI ) "Jenkins uses the args4j library to parse command arguments and options on the Jenkins controller when processing CLI commands," the maintainers  said  in a Wednesday advisory. "This command parser has a feature that replaces an @ character followed by a file path in an argument with the file's contents (expandAtFiles). This feature is enabled by default and Jenkins 2.441 and earlier, LTS 2.426.2 and earlier does not disable it." A threat actor could exploit this quirk to read arbitrary files on the Jenkins controller file system

Multiple security vulnerabilities have been disclosed in the TCP/IP network protocol stack of an open-source reference implementation of the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface ( UEFI ) specification used widely in modern computers. Collectively dubbed  PixieFail  by Quarkslab, the  nine issues  reside in the TianoCore EFI Development Kit II ( EDK II ) and could be exploited to achieve remote code execution, denial-of-service (DoS), DNS cache poisoning, and leakage of sensitive information. UEFI firmware – which is responsible for  booting the operating system  – from AMI, Intel, Insyde, and Phoenix Technologies are impacted by the shortcomings. EDK II incorporates its own TCP/IP stack called  NetworkPkg  to enable network functionalities available during the initial Preboot eXecution Environment ( PXE , pronounced "pixie") stage, which allows for management tasks in the absence of a running operating system. In other words, it is a client-server interface to  boot a

GitHub has revealed that it has rotated some keys in response to a security vulnerability that could be potentially exploited to gain access to credentials within a production container. The Microsoft-owned subsidiary said it was made aware of the problem on December 26, 2023, and that it addressed the issue the same day, in addition to rotating all potentially exposed credentials out of an abundance of caution. The rotated keys include the GitHub commit signing key as well as GitHub Actions, GitHub Codespaces, and Dependabot customer encryption keys, necessitating users who rely on these keys to import the new ones. There is no evidence that the high-severity vulnerability, tracked as  CVE-2024-0200  (CVSS score: 7.2), has been previously found and exploited in the wild. "This vulnerability is also present on GitHub Enterprise Server (GHES)," GitHub's Jacob DePriest  said . "However, exploitation requires an authenticated user with an  organization owner role

Over 178,000 SonicWall firewalls exposed over the internet are exploitable to at least one of the two security flaws that could be potentially exploited to cause a denial-of-service (DoS) condition and remote code execution (RCE). "The two issues are fundamentally the same but exploitable at different HTTP URI paths due to reuse of a vulnerable code pattern," Jon Williams, a senior security engineer at Bishop Fox,  said  in a technical analysis shared with The Hacker News. The vulnerabilities in question are listed below - CVE-2022-22274  (CVSS score: 9.4) - A stack-based buffer overflow vulnerability in the SonicOS via HTTP request allows a remote, unauthenticated attacker to cause DoS or potentially result in code execution in the firewall. CVE-2023-0656  (CVSS score: 7.5) - A stack-based buffer overflow vulnerability in the SonicOS allows a remote, unauthenticated attacker to cause DoS, which could result in a crash. While there are no reports of exploitation of the flaws

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed a now-patched security flaw in the Opera web browser for Microsoft Windows and Apple macOS that could be exploited to execute any file on the underlying operating system. The remote code execution vulnerability has been codenamed MyFlaw by the Guardio Labs research team owing to the fact that it takes advantage of a feature called  My Flow  that makes it possible to sync messages and files between mobile and desktop devices. "This is achieved through a controlled browser extension, effectively bypassing the browser's sandbox and the entire browser process," the company  said  in a statement shared with The Hacker News. The issue impacts both the Opera browser and Opera GX. Following responsible disclosure on November 17, 2023, it was addressed as part of  updates  shipped on November 22, 2023. My Flow features a chat-like interface to exchange notes and files, the latter of which can be opened via a web interface, meaning a f

Multiple security vulnerabilities have been disclosed in Bosch BCC100 thermostats and Rexroth NXA015S-36V-B smart nutrunners that, if successfully exploited, could allow attackers to execute arbitrary code on affected systems. Romanian cybersecurity firm Bitdefender, which  discovered  the flaw in Bosch BCC100 thermostats last August, said the issue could be weaponized by an attacker to alter the device firmware and implant a rogue version. Tracked as  CVE-2023-49722  (CVSS score: 8.3), the high-severity vulnerability was addressed by Bosch in November 2023. "A network port 8899 is always open in BCC101/BCC102/BCC50 thermostat products, which allows an unauthenticated connection from a local WiFi network," the company  said  in an advisory. The issue, at its core, impacts the WiFi microcontroller that acts as a network gateway for the thermostat's logic microcontroller. By exploiting the flaw, an attacker could send commands to the thermostat, including writing a malicious updat

Juniper Networks has released updates to fix a critical remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability in its SRX Series firewalls and EX Series switches. The issue, tracked as  CVE-2024-21591 , is rated 9.8 on the CVSS scoring system. "An out-of-bounds write vulnerability in J-Web of Juniper Networks Junos OS SRX Series and EX Series allows an unauthenticated, network-based attacker to cause a Denial-of-Service (DoS) or Remote Code Execution (RCE) and obtain root privileges on the device," the company  said  in an advisory. The networking equipment major, which is set to be  acquired by Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)  for $14 billion, said the issue is caused by use of an insecure function allowing a bad actor to overwrite arbitrary memory. The flaw impacts the following versions, and has been fixed in versions 20.4R3-S9, 21.2R3-S7, 21.3R3-S5, 21.4R3-S5, 22.1R3-S4, 22.2R3-S3, 22.3R3-S2, 22.4R2-S2, 22.4R3, 23.2R1-S1, 23.2R2, 23.4R1, and later - Junos OS versions earlier than 20.4R

Cybersecurity researchers have identified a new attack that exploits misconfigurations in Apache Hadoop and Flink to deploy cryptocurrency miners within targeted environments. "This attack is particularly intriguing due to the attacker's use of packers and rootkits to conceal the malware," Aqua security researchers Nitzan Yaakov and Assaf Morag  said  in an analysis published earlier this week. "The malware deletes contents of specific directories and modifies system configurations to evade detection." The infection chain targeting Hadoop leverages a misconfiguration in the YARN's (Yet Another Resource Negotiator)  ResourceManager , which is responsible for tracking resources in a cluster and scheduling applications. Specifically, the misconfiguration can be exploited by an unauthenticated, remote threat actor to execute arbitrary code by means of a crafted HTTP request, subject to the privileges of the user on the node where the code is executed. The

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has  added  a critical security vulnerability impacting Microsoft SharePoint Server to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities ( KEV ) catalog, citing evidence of active exploitation. The issue, tracked as  CVE-2023-29357  (CVSS score: 9.8), is a privilege escalation flaw that could be exploited by an attacker to gain administrator privileges. Microsoft  released patches  for the bug as part of its June 2023 Patch Tuesday updates. "An attacker who has gained access to spoofed JWT authentication tokens can use them to execute a network attack which bypasses authentication and allows them to gain access to the privileges of an authenticated user," Redmond said. "The attacker needs no privileges nor does the user need to perform any action." Security researcher Nguyễn Tiến Giang (Jang) of StarLabs SG  demonstrated an exploit  for the flaw at the Pwn2Own Vancouver hacking contest last year, earning a $100,000 prize. The  pr

Cybersecurity researchers have  developed  a proof-of-concept (PoC) code that exploits a  recently disclosed critical flaw  in the Apache OfBiz open-source Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system to execute a memory-resident payload. The vulnerability in question is  CVE-2023-51467  (CVSS score: 9.8), a bypass for another severe shortcoming in the same software ( CVE-2023-49070 , CVSS score: 9.8) that could be weaponized to circumvent authentication and remotely execute arbitrary code. While it was fixed in  Apache OFbiz version 18.12.11  released last month, threat actors have been observed attempting to exploit the flaw, targeting vulnerable instances. The latest findings from VulnCheck show that CVE-2023-51467 can be exploited to execute a payload directly from memory, leaving little to no traces of malicious activity. Security flaws disclosed in Apache OFBiz (e.g.,  CVE-2020-9496 ) have been  exploited  by threat actors in the past, including by threat actors associated wit

Microsoft has addressed a total of  48 security flaws  spanning its software as part of its Patch Tuesday updates for January 2024. Of the 48 bugs, two are rated Critical and 46 are rated Important in severity. There is no evidence that any of the issues are publicly known or under active attack at the time of release, making it the second consecutive Patch Tuesday with no zero-days. The fixes are in addition to  nine security vulnerabilities  that have been resolved in the Chromium-based Edge browser since the release of  December 2023 Patch Tuesday  updates. This also includes a fix for a zero-day ( CVE-2023-7024 , CVSS score: 8.8) that Google said has been actively exploited in the wild. The most critical among the flaws patched this month are as follows - CVE-2024-20674  (CVSS score: 9.0) - Windows Kerberos Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability CVE-2024-20700  (CVSS score: 7.5) - Windows Hyper-V Remote Code Execution Vulnerability "The authentication feature could be bypas

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has  added  six security flaws to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities ( KEV ) catalog, citing evidence of active exploitation. This includes  CVE-2023-27524  (CVSS score: 8.9), a high-severity vulnerability impacting the Apache Superset open-source data visualization software that could enable remote code execution. It was fixed in version 2.1. Details of the issue  first came to light  in April 2023, with Horizon3.ai's Naveen Sunkavally describing it as a "dangerous default configuration in Apache Superset that allows an unauthenticated attacker to gain remote code execution, harvest credentials, and compromise data." It's currently not known how the vulnerability is being exploited in the wild. Also added by CISA are five other flaws - CVE-2023-38203  (CVSS score: 9.8) - Adobe ColdFusion Deserialization of Untrusted Data Vulnerability CVE-2023-29300  (CVSS score: 9.8) - Adobe ColdFusion Deserialization of Untrus

Ivanti has released security updates to address a critical flaw impacting its Endpoint Manager (EPM) solution that, if successfully exploited, could result in remote code execution (RCE) on susceptible servers. Tracked as CVE-2023-39336, the vulnerability has been rated 9.6 out of 10 on the CVSS scoring system. The shortcoming impacts EPM 2021 and EPM 2022 prior to SU5. "If exploited, an attacker with access to the internal network can leverage an unspecified SQL injection to execute arbitrary SQL queries and retrieve output without the need for authentication," Ivanti  said  in an advisory. "This can then allow the attacker control over machines running the EPM agent. When the core server is configured to use SQL express, this might lead to RCE on the core server." The disclosure arrived weeks after the company  resolved  nearly two dozen security flaws in its Avalanche enterprise mobile device management (MDM) solution. Of the 21 issues, 13 are rated critical (CVSS scores: 9.8

Technical details have emerged about two now-patched security flaws in Microsoft Windows that could be chained by threat actors to achieve remote code execution on the Outlook email service sans any user interaction. "An attacker on the internet can chain the vulnerabilities together to create a full, zero-click remote code execution (RCE) exploit against Outlook clients," Akamai security researcher Ben Barnea, who discovered the vulnerabilities, said in a  two-part   report  shared with The Hacker News. The security issues, which were addressed by Microsoft in  August  and  October 2023 , respectively, are listed below - CVE-2023-35384  (CVSS score: 5.4) - Windows HTML Platforms Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability CVE-2023-36710  (CVSS score: 7.8) - Windows Media Foundation Core Remote Code Execution Vulnerability CVE-2023-35384 has been described by Akamai as a bypass for a critical security flaw that Microsoft patched in March 2023. Tracked as  CVE-2023-23397  (C