server security | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Interactive livestreaming platform Twitch  acknowledged  a "breach" after an anonymous poster on the 4chan messaging board leaked its source code, an unreleased Steam competitor from Amazon Game Studios, details of creator payouts , proprietary software development kits, and other internal tools. The Amazon-owned service said it's "working with urgency to understand the extent of this," adding the data was exposed "due to an error in a Twitch server configuration change that was subsequently accessed by a malicious third party." "At this time, we have no indication that login credentials have been exposed," Twitch  noted  in a post published late Wednesday. "Additionally, full credit card numbers are not stored by Twitch, so full credit card numbers were not exposed." The forum user claimed the hack is designed to "foster more disruption and competition in the online video streaming space" because "their communi...

The IDC cloud security survey 2021 states that as many as 98% of companies were victims of a cloud data breach within the past 18 months. Fostered by the pandemic, small and large organizations from all over the world are migrating their data and infrastructure into a public cloud, while often underestimating novel and cloud-specific security or privacy issues.  Nearly every morning, the headlines are full of sensational news about tens of millions of health or financial records being found in unprotected cloud storage like AWS S3 buckets, Microsoft Azure blobs or another cloud-native storage service by the growing number of smaller cloud security providers.  ImmuniWeb, a rapidly growing application security vendor that offers a variety of AI-driven products, has announced this week that its free  Community Edition , running over 150,000 daily security tests, now has one more online tool –  cloud security test . To check your unprotected cloud storage, you just ...

An unpatched design flaw in the implementation of Microsoft Exchange's Autodiscover protocol has resulted in the leak of approximately 100,000 login names and passwords for Windows domains worldwide. "This is a severe security issue, since if an attacker can control such domains or has the ability to 'sniff' traffic in the same network, they can capture domain credentials in plain text (HTTP basic authentication) that are being transferred over the wire," Guardicore's Amit Serper  said  in a technical report. "Moreover, if the attacker has DNS-poisoning capabilities on a large scale (such as a nation-state attacker), they could systematically syphon out leaky passwords through a large-scale DNS poisoning campaign based on these Autodiscover TLDs [top-level domains]." The Exchange  Autodiscover  service enables users to configure applications such as Microsoft Outlook with minimal user input, allowing just a combination of email addresses and pas...

VMware on Tuesday published a new bulletin warning of as many as 19 vulnerabilities in vCenter Server and Cloud Foundation appliances that a remote attacker could exploit to take control of an affected system. The most urgent among them is an arbitrary file upload vulnerability in the Analytics service (CVE-2021-22005) that impacts vCenter Server 6.7 and 7.0 deployments. "A malicious actor with network access to port 443 on vCenter Server may exploit this issue to execute code on vCenter Server by uploading a specially crafted file," the company  noted ,  adding  "this vulnerability can be used by anyone who can reach vCenter Server over the network to gain access, regardless of the configuration settings of vCenter Server." Although VMware has published  workarounds  for the flaw, the company cautioned that they are "meant to be a temporary solution until updates […] can be deployed." The complete list of flaws patched by the virtualization services ...

A critical security vulnerability has been disclosed in  HAProxy , a widely used open-source load balancer and proxy server, that could be abused by an adversary to possibly smuggle HTTP requests, resulting in unauthorized access to sensitive data and execution of arbitrary commands, effectively opening the door to an array of attacks. Tracked as  CVE-2021-40346 , the Integer Overflow vulnerability has a severity rating of 8.6 on the CVSS scoring system and has been rectified in HAProxy versions 2.0.25, 2.2.17, 2.3.14 and 2.4.4. HTTP Request Smuggling, as the name implies, is a web application attack that tampers the manner a website processes sequences of HTTP requests received from more than one user. Also called HTTP desynchronization, the technique takes advantage of parsing inconsistencies in how front-end servers and back-end servers process requests from the senders. Front-end servers are typically load balancers or reverse proxies that are used by websites to mana...

Cloud infrastructure security company Wiz on Thursday revealed details of a now-fixed Azure Cosmos database vulnerability that could have been potentially exploited to grant any Azure user full admin access to other customers' database instances without any authorization. The flaw, which grants read, write, and delete privileges, has been dubbed " ChaosDB ," with Wiz researchers noting that "the vulnerability has a trivial exploit that doesn't require any previous access to the target environment, and impacts thousands of organizations, including numerous Fortune 500 companies." Cosmos DB is Microsoft's proprietary  NoSQL database  that's advertised as "a fully managed service" that "takes database administration off your hands with automatic management, updates and patching." The Wiz Research Team reported the issue to Microsoft on August 12, after which the Windows maker took steps to mitigate the issue within 48 hours of r...

A new highly capable and persistent threat actor has been targeting major high-profile public and private entities in the U.S. as part of a series of targeted cyber intrusion attacks by exploiting internet-facing Microsoft Internet Information Services ( IIS ) servers to infiltrate their networks. Israeli cybersecurity firm Sygnia, which identified the campaign, is tracking the advanced, stealthy adversary under the moniker "Praying Mantis" or "TG2021." "TG1021 uses a custom-made malware framework, built around a common core, tailor-made for IIS servers. The toolset is completely volatile, reflectively loaded into an affected machine's memory and leaves little-to-no trace on infected targets," the researchers  said . "The threat actor also uses an additional stealthy backdoor and several post-exploitations modules to perform network reconnaissance, elevate privileges, and move laterally within networks."  Besides exhibiting capabilities...

Web infrastructure and website security company Cloudflare last month fixed a critical vulnerability in its CDNJS library that's  used by 12.7% of all websites  on the internet. CDNJS is a free and open-source content delivery network (CDN) that serves about  4,041 JavaScript and CSS libraries , making it the  second most popular  CDN for JavaScript after Google Hosted Libraries. The weakness concerned an issue in the CDNJS library update server that could potentially allow an attacker to execute arbitrary commands, leading to a complete compromise. The vulnerability was discovered and reported by security researcher RyotaK on April 6, 2021. There is no evidence of in-the-wild attacks abusing this flaw. Specifically, the vulnerability works by publishing packages to Cloudflare's CDNJS using GitHub and npm, using it to trigger a  path traversal vulnerability , and ultimately trick the server into executing arbitrary code, thus achieving remote code exe...

Cybersecurity researchers are sounding the alarm bell over a new ransomware strain called " DarkRadiation " that's implemented entirely in Bash and targets Linux and Docker cloud containers, while banking on messaging service Telegram for command-and-control (C2) communications. "The ransomware is written in  Bash  script and targets Red Hat/CentOS and Debian Linux distributions," researchers from Trend Micro  said  in a report published last week. "The malware uses OpenSSL's AES algorithm with CBC mode to encrypt files in various directories. It also uses Telegram's API to send an infection status to the threat actor(s)." As of writing, there's no information available on the delivery methods or evidence that the ransomware has been deployed in real-world attacks. The findings come from an analysis of a collection of hacking tools hosted on the unidentified threat actor's infrastructure (IP address "185.141.25.168") in a...

It didn't take long. Intelligence agencies and cybersecurity researchers had been warning that unpatched Exchange Servers could open the pathway for ransomware infections in the wake of swift escalation of the attacks since last week. Now it appears that threat actors have caught up.  According to the latest reports , cybercriminals are leveraging the heavily exploited ProxyLogon Exchange Server flaws to install a new strain of ransomware called "DearCry." "Microsoft observed a new family of human operated ransomware attack customers – detected as Ransom:Win32/DoejoCrypt.A," Microsoft researcher Phillip Misner  tweeted . "Human operated ransomware attacks are utilizing the Microsoft Exchange vulnerabilities to exploit customers." Microsoft's security intelligence team, in a separate tweet,  confirmed  that it has begun "blocking a new family of ransomware being used after an initial compromise of unpatched on-premises Exchange Servers....

A new distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS) vector has ensnared Plex Media Server systems to amplify malicious traffic against targets to take them offline. "Plex's startup processes unintentionally expose a Plex UPnP-enabled service registration responder to the general Internet, where it can be abused to generate reflection/amplification DDoS attacks," Netscout researchers  said  in a Thursday alert. Plex Media Server  is a personal media library and streaming system that runs on modern Windows, macOS, and Linux operating systems, as well as variants customized for special-purpose platforms such as network-attached storage (NAS) devices and digital media players. The desktop application organizes video, audio, and photos from a user's library and from online services, allowing access to and stream the contents to other compatible devices. DDoS attacks typically involve flooding a legitimate target with junk network traffic that comes from a large number o...

A financially-motivated threat actor notorious for its cryptojacking attacks has leveraged a revised version of their malware to target cloud infrastructures using vulnerabilities in web server technologies, according to new research. Deployed by the China-based cybercrime group  Rocke , the Pro-Ocean cryptojacking malware now comes with improved rootkit and worm capabilities, as well as harbors new evasion tactics to sidestep cybersecurity companies' detection methods, Palo Alto Networks' Unit 42 researchers  said  in a Thursday write-up. "Pro-Ocean uses known vulnerabilities to target cloud applications," the researchers detailed. "In our analysis, we found Pro-Ocean targeting Apache ActiveMQ ( CVE-2016-3088 ), Oracle WebLogic ( CVE-2017-10271 ) and Redis (unsecure instances)." "Once installed, the malware kills any process that uses the CPU heavily, so that it's able to use 100% of the CPU and mine Monero efficiently." First documented...

As businesses are increasingly migrating to the cloud, securing the infrastructure has never been more important. Now according to the latest research, two security flaws in Microsoft's Azure App Services could have enabled a bad actor to carry out server-side request forgery ( SSRF ) attacks or execute arbitrary code and take over the administration server. "This enables an attacker to quietly take over the App Service's git server, or implant malicious phishing pages accessible through Azure Portal to target system administrators," cybersecurity firm Intezer said in a report published today and shared with The Hacker News. Discovered by  Paul Litvak of Intezer Labs, the flaws were reported to Microsoft in June, after which the company subsequently addressed them. Azure App Service is a cloud computing-based platform that's used as a hosting web service for building web apps and mobile backends. When an App Service is created via Azure, a new Docker env...

A group of researchers has detailed a new timing vulnerability in Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol that could potentially allow an attacker to break the encryption and read sensitive communication under specific conditions. Dubbed " Raccoon Attack ," the server-side attack exploits a side-channel in the cryptographic protocol (versions 1.2 and lower) to extract the shared secret key used for secure communications between two parties. "The root cause for this side channel is that the TLS standard encourages non-constant-time processing of the DH secret," the researchers explained their findings in a paper. "If the server reuses ephemeral keys, this side channel may allow an attacker to recover the premaster secret by solving an instance of the Hidden Number Problem." However, the academics stated that the vulnerability is hard to exploit and relies on very precise timing measurements and on a specific server configuration to be exploitable. ...

A cybercrime group that has previously struck Docker and Kubernetes cloud environments has evolved to repurpose genuine cloud monitoring tools as a backdoor to carry out malicious attacks, according to new research. "To our knowledge, this is the first time attackers have been caught using legitimate third party software to target cloud infrastructure," Israeli cybersecurity firm Intezer said in a Tuesday analysis. Using software called Weave Scope , which is used as a visualization and monitoring tool for Docker and Kubernetes services, the TeamTNT threat actor not only mapped the cloud environment of their victims but also executed system commands without having to deploy malicious code on the target server explicitly. TeamTNT has been active at least since late April this year, directing their attacks on misconfigured Docker ports to install a cryptocurrency mining malware and a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) bot. Then last month , the crypto-mining gan...

Starting today, the lifespan of new TLS certificates will be limited to 398 days, a little over a year, from the previous maximum certificate lifetime of 27 months (825 days). In a move that's meant to boost security, Apple, Google, and Mozilla are set to reject publicly rooted digital certificates in their respective web browsers that expire more than 13 months (or 398 days) from their creation date. The lifespan of SSL/TLS certificates has shrunk significantly over the last decade. In 2011, the Certification Authority Browser Forum (CA/Browser Forum), a consortium of certification authorities and vendors of browser software, imposed a limit of five years, bringing down the certificate validity period from 8-10 years. Subsequently, in 2015, it was cut short to three years and to two years again in 2018. Although the proposal to reduce certificate lifetimes to one year was shot down in a ballot last September , the measure has been overwhelmingly supported by the browser...

Microsoft has issued an emergency out-of-band software update for Windows 8.1, Windows RT 8.1, and Windows Server 2012 R2 systems to patch two new recently disclosed security vulnerabilities. Tracked as CVE-2020-1530 and CVE-2020-1537 , both flaws reside in the Remote Access Service (RAS) in a way it manages memory and file operations and could let remote attackers gain elevated privileges after successful exploitation. In brief, the Remote Access Service functionality of the Windows operating system allows remote clients to connect to the server and access internal resources from anywhere via the Internet. A patch for both vulnerabilities was first released on August 11 with the batch of August Patch Tuesday updates, but it was for Windows 10, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008, 2012, 2016, 2019, and Windows Server versions 1903, 1909, and 2004 systems. A week later, yesterday, on August 19, the company announced that Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2 systems are vulner...

Jenkins—a popular open-source automation server software—published an advisory on Monday concerning a critical vulnerability in the Jetty web server that could result in memory corruption and cause confidential information to be disclosed. Tracked as CVE-2019-17638 , the flaw has a CVSS rating of 9.4 and impacts Eclipse Jetty versions 9.4.27.v20200227 to 9.4.29.v20200521—a full-featured tool that provides a Java HTTP server and web container for use in software frameworks. "Jenkins bundles Winstone-Jetty, a wrapper around Jetty, to act as HTTP and servlet server when started using java -jar jenkins.war. This is how Jenkins is run when using any of the installers or packages, but not when run using servlet containers such as Tomcat," read the advisory. "The vulnerability may allow unauthenticated attackers to obtain HTTP response headers that may include sensitive data intended for another user." The flaw , which impacts Jetty and Jenkins Core, appears to...

SAP has patched a critical vulnerability impacting the LM Configuration Wizard component in NetWeaver Application Server (AS) Java platform, allowing an unauthenticated attacker to take control of SAP applications. The bug, dubbed RECON and tracked as CVE-2020-6287 , is rated with a maximum CVSS score of 10 out of 10, potentially affecting over 40,000 SAP customers, according to cybersecurity firm Onapsis, which uncovered the flaw . "If successfully exploited, a remote, unauthenticated attacker can obtain unrestricted access to SAP systems through the creation of high-privileged users and the execution of arbitrary operating system commands with the privileges of the SAP service user account, which has unrestricted access to the SAP database and is able to perform application maintenance activities, such as shutting down federated SAP applications," the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said in an advisory . "The confidentiality, integr...