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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

Cybersecurity researchers have found that it's possible for threat actors to exploit a well-known utility called command-not-found to recommend their own rogue packages and compromise systems running Ubuntu operating system. "While 'command-not-found' serves as a convenient tool for suggesting installations for uninstalled commands, it can be inadvertently manipulated by attackers through the snap repository, leading to deceptive recommendations of malicious packages," cloud security firm Aqua said in a report shared with The Hacker News. Installed by default on Ubuntu systems, command-not-found  suggests  packages to install in interactive bash sessions when attempting to run commands that are not available. The suggestions include both the Advanced Packaging Tool ( APT ) and  snap packages . While the tool uses an internal database ("/var/lib/command-not-found/commands.db") to suggest APT packages, it relies on the " advise-snap " comman

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,

Microsoft has released patches to address  73 security flaws  spanning its software lineup as part of its Patch Tuesday updates for February 2024, including two zero-days that have come under active exploitation. Of the 73 vulnerabilities, 5 are rated Critical, 65 are rated Important, and three and rated Moderate in severity. This is in addition to  24 flaws  that have been fixed in the Chromium-based Edge browser since the release of the January 2024 Patch Tuesday updates . The two flaws that are listed as under active attack at the time of release are below - CVE-2024-21351  (CVSS score: 7.6) - Windows SmartScreen Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability CVE-2024-21412  (CVSS score: 8.1) - Internet Shortcut Files Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability "The vulnerability allows a malicious actor to inject code into  SmartScreen  and potentially gain code execution, which could potentially lead to some data exposure, lack of system availability, or both," Microsoft said a

Apple macOS users are the target of a new Rust-based backdoor that has been operating under the radar since November 2023. The backdoor,  codenamed   RustDoor  by Bitdefender, has been found to impersonate an update for Microsoft Visual Studio and target both Intel and Arm architectures. The exact initial access pathway used to propagate the implant is currently not known, although it's said to be distributed as FAT binaries that contain Mach-O files. Multiple variants of the malware with minor modifications have been detected to date, likely indicating active development. The earliest sample of RustDoor dates back to November 2, 2023. It comes with a wide range of commands that allow it to gather and upload files, and harvest information about the compromised endpoint. Some versions also include configurations with details about what data to collect, the list of targeted extensions and directories, and the directories to exclude. The captured information is then exfiltrate

Cisco, Fortinet, and VMware have released security fixes for multiple security vulnerabilities, including critical weaknesses that could be exploited to perform arbitrary actions on affected devices. The first set from Cisco consists of three flaws – CVE-2024-20252 and CVE-2024-20254 (CVSS score: 9.6) and CVE-2024-20255 (CVSS score: 8.2) – impacting Cisco Expressway Series that could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to conduct cross-site request forgery (CSRF) attacks. All the issues, which were found during internal security testing, stem from insufficient CSRF protections for the web-based management interface that could permit an attacker to perform arbitrary actions with the privilege level of the affected user. "If the affected user has administrative privileges, these actions could include modifying the system configuration and creating new privileged accounts," Cisco  said  about CVE-2024-20252 and CVE-2024-20254. On the other hand, successful exploitatio

JetBrains is alerting customers of a critical security flaw in its TeamCity On-Premises continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) software that could be exploited by threat actors to take over susceptible instances. The vulnerability, tracked as  CVE-2024-23917 , carries a CVSS rating of 9.8 out of 10, indicative of its severity. "The vulnerability may enable an unauthenticated attacker with HTTP(S) access to a TeamCity server to bypass authentication checks and gain administrative control of that TeamCity server," the company  said . The issue impacts all TeamCity On-Premises versions from 2017.1 through 2023.11.2. It has been addressed in version 2023.11.3. An unnamed external security researcher has been credited with discovering and reporting the flaw on January 19, 2024. Users who are unable to update their servers to version 2023.11.3 can alternately download a security patch plugin to apply fixes for the flaw. "If your server is publicly acce

Remote desktop software maker AnyDesk disclosed on Friday that it suffered a cyber attack that led to a compromise of its production systems. The German company said the incident, which it discovered following a security audit, is not a ransomware attack and that it has notified relevant authorities. "We have revoked all security-related certificates and systems have been remediated or replaced where necessary," the company  said  in a statement. "We will be revoking the previous code signing certificate for our binaries shortly and have already started replacing it with a new one." Out of an abundance of caution, AnyDesk has also revoked all passwords to its web portal, my.anydesk[.]com, and it's urging users to change their passwords if the same passwords have been reused on other online services. It's also recommending that users download the latest version of the software, which comes with a new  code signing certificate . AnyDesk did not disclose

Multiple security vulnerabilities have been disclosed in the runC command line tool that could be exploited by threat actors to escape the bounds of the container and stage follow-on attacks. The vulnerabilities, tracked as CVE-2024-21626, CVE-2024-23651, CVE-2024-23652, and CVE-2024-23653, have been collectively dubbed  Leaky Vessels  by cybersecurity vendor Snyk. "These container escapes could allow an attacker to gain unauthorized access to the underlying host operating system from within the container and potentially permit access to sensitive data (credentials, customer info, etc.), and launch further attacks, especially when the access gained includes superuser privileges," the company  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. runC  is a tool for spawning and running containers on Linux. It was originally developed as part of Docker and later  spun out  into a separate open-source library in 2015. A brief description of each of the flaws is below - CVE-202

Ivanti is alerting of two new high-severity flaws in its Connect Secure and Policy Secure products, one of which is said to have come under targeted exploitation in the wild. The list of vulnerabilities is as follows - CVE-2024-21888  (CVSS score: 8.8) - A privilege escalation vulnerability in the web component of Ivanti Connect Secure (9.x, 22.x) and Ivanti Policy Secure (9.x, 22.x) allows a user to elevate privileges to that of an administrator CVE-2024-21893  (CVSS score: 8.2) - A server-side request forgery vulnerability in the SAML component of Ivanti Connect Secure (9.x, 22.x), Ivanti Policy Secure (9.x, 22.x) and Ivanti Neurons for ZTA allows an attacker to access certain restricted resources without authentication The Utah-based software company  said  it found no evidence of customers being impacted by CVE-2024-21888 so far, but acknowledged "the exploitation of CVE-2024-21893 appears to be targeted" and that it's "aware of a limited number of cust

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.

A critical security flaw has been disclosed in Fortra's GoAnywhere Managed File Transfer (MFT) software that could be abused to create a new administrator user. Tracked as  CVE-2024-0204 , the issue carries a CVSS score of 9.8 out of 10. "Authentication bypass in Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT prior to 7.4.1 allows an unauthorized user to create an admin user via the administration portal," Fortra  said  in an advisory released on January 22, 2024. Users who cannot upgrade to version 7.4.1 can apply temporary workarounds in non-container deployments by deleting the InitialAccountSetup.xhtml file in the install directory and restarting the services. For container-deployed instances, it's recommended to replace the file with an empty file and restart. Mohammed Eldeeb and Islam Elrfai of Cairo-based Spark Engineering Consultants have been credited with discovering and reporting the flaw in December 2023. Cybersecurity firm Horizon3.ai, which published a  proof-of-co

Several public and popular libraries abandoned but still used in Java and Android applications have been found susceptible to a new software supply chain attack method called MavenGate. "Access to projects can be hijacked through domain name purchases and since most default build configurations are vulnerable, it would be difficult or even impossible to know whether an attack was being performed," Oversecured  said  in an analysis published last week. Successful exploitation of these shortcomings could allow nefarious actors to hijack artifacts in dependencies and inject malicious code into the application, and worse, even compromise the build process through a malicious plugin. The mobile security firm added that all Maven-based technologies, including Gradle, are vulnerable to the attack, and that it sent reports to more than 200 companies, including Google, Facebook, Signal, Amazon, and others. Apache Maven is  chiefly used  for building and managing Java-based projec

GitLab has released security updates to address two critical vulnerabilities, including one that could be exploited to take over accounts without requiring any user interaction. Tracked as  CVE-2023-7028 , the flaw has been awarded the maximum severity of 10.0 on the CVSS scoring system and could facilitate account takeover by sending password reset emails to an unverified email address. The DevSecOps platform said the vulnerability is the result of a bug in the email verification process, which allowed users to reset their password through a secondary email address. It affects all self-managed instances of GitLab Community Edition (CE) and Enterprise Edition (EE) using the below versions - 16.1 prior to 16.1.6 16.2 prior to 16.2.9 16.3 prior to 16.3.7 16.4 prior to 16.4.5 16.5 prior to 16.5.6 16.6 prior to 16.6.4 16.7 prior to 16.7.2 GitLab said it addressed the issue in GitLab versions 16.5.6, 16.6.4, and 16.7.2, in addition to backporting the fix to versions 16.1.6, 1

The threat actor known as UAC-0050 is leveraging phishing attacks to distribute Remcos RAT using new strategies to evade detection from security software. "The group's weapon of choice is Remcos RAT, a notorious malware for remote surveillance and control, which has been at the forefront of its espionage arsenal," Uptycs security researchers Karthickkumar Kathiresan and Shilpesh Trivedi  said  in a Wednesday report. "However, in their latest operational twist, the UAC-0050 group has integrated a pipe method for  interprocess communication , showcasing their advanced adaptability." UAC-0050, active since 2020, has a  history  of targeting Ukrainian and Polish entities via social engineering campaigns that impersonate legitimate organizations to trick recipients into opening malicious attachments. In February 2023, the Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine (CERT-UA) attributed the adversary to a phishing campaign designed to deliver Remcos RAT. Over t

Google has rolled out security updates for the Chrome web browser to address a high-severity zero-day flaw that it said has been exploited in the wild. The vulnerability, assigned the CVE identifier  CVE-2023-7024 , has been described as a  heap-based buffer overflow bug  in the WebRTC framework that could be exploited to result in program crashes or arbitrary code execution. Clément Lecigne and Vlad Stolyarov of Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG) have been credited with discovering and reporting the flaw on December 19, 2023. No other details about the security defect have been released to prevent further abuse, with Google  acknowledging  that "an exploit for CVE-2023-7024 exists in the wild." Given that WebRTC is an open-source project and that it's also supported by Mozilla Firefox and Apple Safari, it's currently not clear if the flaw has any impact beyond Chrome and Chromium-based browsers. The development marks the resolution of the eighth actively

Threat actors are increasingly making use of GitHub for malicious purposes through novel methods, including abusing secret Gists and issuing malicious commands via git commit messages. "Malware authors occasionally place their samples in services like Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, and Discord to host second stage malware and sidestep detection tools," ReversingLabs researcher Karlo Zanki  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. "But lately, we have observed the increasing use of the GitHub open-source development platform for hosting malware." Legitimate public services are  known  to be  used  by  threat actors  for hosting malware and acting as  dead drop resolvers  to fetch the actual command-and-control (C2) address. While using public sources for C2 does not make them immune to takedowns, they do offer the benefit of allowing threat actors to easily create attack infrastructure that's both inexpensive and reliable. This technique is sneaky

Crypto hardware wallet maker Ledger published a new version of its " @ledgerhq/connect-kit " npm module after unidentified threat actors pushed malicious code that led to the theft of  more than $600,000  in virtual assets. The  compromise  was the result of a former employee falling victim to a phishing attack, the company said in a statement. This allowed the attackers to gain access to Ledger's npm account and upload three malicious versions of the module – 1.1.5, 1.1.6, and 1.1.7 — and propagate  crypto drainer malware  to  other applications  that are dependent on the module, resulting in a software supply chain breach. "The malicious code used a rogue WalletConnect project to reroute funds to a hacker wallet," Ledger  said . Connect Kit , as the name implies, makes it possible to connect DApps (short decentralized applications) to Ledger's hardware wallets. According to security firm Sonatype, version 1.1.7 directly embedded a wallet-draining pa