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As many as 55 zero-day vulnerabilities were exploited in the wild in 2022, with most of the flaws discovered in software from Microsoft, Google, and Apple. While this figure represents a decrease from the year before, when a staggering 81 zero-days were weaponized, it still represents a significant uptick in recent years of threat actors leveraging unknown security flaws to their advantage. The  findings  come from threat intelligence firm Mandiant, which noted that desktop operating systems (19), web browsers (11), IT and network management products (10), and mobile operating systems (six) accounted for the most exploited product types. Of the 55 zero-day bugs, 13 are estimated to have been abused by cyber espionage groups, with four others exploited by financially motivated threat actors for ransomware-related operations. Commercial spyware vendors were linked to the exploitation of three zero-days. Among state-sponsored groups, those attributed to China have emerged as the most

Microsoft on Tuesday released  security updates  to address 75 flaws spanning its product portfolio, three of which have come under active exploitation in the wild. The updates are in addition to 22 flaws the Windows maker  patched  in its Chromium-based Edge browser over the past month. Of the 75 vulnerabilities, nine are rated Critical and 66 are rated Important in severity. 37 out of 75 bugs are classified as remote code execution (RCE) flaws. The three zero-days of note that have been exploited are as follows - CVE-2023-21715  (CVSS score: 7.3) - Microsoft Office Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability CVE-2023-21823  (CVSS score: 7.8) - Windows Graphics Component Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability CVE-2023-23376  (CVSS score: 7.8) - Windows Common Log File System (CLFS) Driver Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability "The attack itself is carried out locally by a user with authentication to the targeted system," Microsoft said in advisory for CVE-2023-21715. "

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Apple on Monday rolled out security updates for  iOS, iPadOS ,  macOS , and  Safari  to address a zero-day flaw that it said has been actively exploited in the wild. Tracked as  CVE-2023-23529 , the issue relates to a type confusion bug in the WebKit browser engine that could be activated when processing maliciously crafted web content, culminating in arbitrary code execution. The iPhone maker said the bug was addressed with improved checks, adding it's "aware of a report that this issue may have been actively exploited." An anonymous researcher has been credited with reporting the flaw. It's not immediately clear as to how the vulnerability is being exploited in real-world attacks, but it's the second actively abused type confusion flaw in WebKit to be patched by Apple after  CVE-2022-42856  in as many months, which was closed in December 2022.  WebKit flaws are also notable for the fact that they impact every third-party web browser that's available fo

An unknown threat actor created malicious game modes for the Dota 2 multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) video game that could have been exploited to establish backdoor access to players' systems. The modes exploited a  high-severity flaw  in the V8 JavaScript engine tracked as  CVE-2021-38003  (CVSS score: 8.8), which was  exploited as a zero-day  and addressed by Google in October 2021. "Since V8 was not sandboxed in Dota, the exploit on its own allowed for remote code execution against other Dota players," Avast researcher Jan Vojtěšek  said  in a report published last week. Following responsible disclosure to Valve, the game publisher  shipped fixes  on January 12, 2023, by upgrading the version of V8. Game modes are essentially  custom capabilities  that can either augment an existing title or offer completely new gameplay in a manner that deviates from the standard rules. While publishing a custom game mode to the Steam store includes a vetting process from

A zero-day flaw in a WordPress plugin called  BackupBuddy  is being actively exploited, WordPress security company Wordfence has disclosed. "This vulnerability makes it possible for unauthenticated users to download arbitrary files from the affected site which can include sensitive information," it  said . BackupBuddy allows users to back up their entire WordPress installation from within the dashboard, including theme files, pages, posts, widgets, users, and media files, among others. The plugin is estimated to have around 140,000 active installations, with the flaw (CVE-2022-31474, CVSS score: 7.5) affecting versions 8.5.8.0 to 8.7.4.1. It's been addressed in version 8.7.5 released on September 2, 2022. The issue is rooted in the function called "Local Directory Copy" that's designed to store a local copy of the backups. According to Wordfence, the vulnerability is the result of an insecure implementation, which enables an unauthenticated threat acto

Google on Monday shipped security updates to address a high-severity zero-day vulnerability in its Chrome web browser that it said is being exploited in the wild. The shortcoming, tracked as  CVE-2022-2294 , relates to a heap overflow flaw in the  WebRTC  component that provides real-time audio and video communication capabilities in browsers without the need to install plugins or download native apps. Heap buffer overflows, also referred to as heap overrun or heap smashing, occur when data is overwritten in the  heap area of the memory , leading to arbitrary code execution or a denial-of-service (DoS) condition. "Heap-based overflows can be used to overwrite function pointers that may be living in memory, pointing it to the attacker's code," MITRE  explains . "When the consequence is arbitrary code execution, this can often be used to subvert any other security service." Credited with reporting the flaw on July 1, 2022, is Jan Vojtesek from the Avast Thre

A suspected ransomware intrusion attempt against an unnamed target leveraged a Mitel VoIP appliance as an entry point to achieve remote code execution and gain initial access to the environment. The  findings  come from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, which traced the source of the attack to a Linux-based Mitel VoIP device sitting on the network perimeter, while also identifying a previously unknown exploit as well as a couple of anti-forensic measures adopted by the actor on the device to erase traces of their actions. The zero-day exploit in question is tracked as CVE-2022-29499 and was fixed by Mitel in April 2022 by means of a remediation script that it shared with customers. It's rated 9.8 out of 10 for severity on the CVSS vulnerability scoring system, making it a critical shortcoming. "A vulnerability has been identified in the Mitel Service Appliance component of MiVoice Connect (Mitel Service Appliances – SA 100, SA 400, and Virtual SA) which could allow a malic

Cisco on Friday rolled out fixes for a medium-severity vulnerability affecting IOS XR Software that it said has been exploited in real-world attacks. Tracked as CVE-2022-20821 (CVSS score: 6.5), the issue relates to an open port vulnerability that could be abused by an unauthenticated, remote attacker to connect to a Redis instance and achieve code execution. "A successful exploit could allow the attacker to write to the Redis in-memory database, write arbitrary files to the container filesystem, and retrieve information about the Redis database," Cisco  said  in an advisory. "Given the configuration of the sandboxed container that the Redis instance runs in, a remote attacker would be unable to execute remote code or abuse the integrity of the Cisco IOS XR Software host system." The flaw, which it said was identified during the resolution of a technical assistance center (TAC) case, impacts Cisco 8000 Series routers running IOS XR Software that has the health

Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG) on Thursday pointed fingers at a North Macedonian spyware developer named Cytrox for developing exploits against five zero-day (aka 0-day) flaws, four in Chrome and one in Android, to target Android users. "The 0-day exploits were used alongside n-day exploits as the developers took advantage of the time difference between when some critical bugs were patched but not flagged as security issues and when these patches were fully deployed across the Android ecosystem," TAG researchers Clement Lecigne and Christian Resell  said . Cytrox is alleged to have packaged the exploits and sold them to different government-backed actors located in Egypt, Armenia, Greece, Madagascar, Côte d'Ivoire, Serbia, Spain, and Indonesia, who, in turn, weaponized the bugs in at least three different campaigns. The commercial surveillance company is the maker of  Predator , an implant  analogous  to that of NSO Group's  Pegasus , and is known to hav

The maintainers of Spring Framework have released an emergency patch to address a newly disclosed  remote code execution flaw  that, if successfully exploited, could allow an unauthenticated attacker to take control of a targeted system. Tracked as  CVE-2022-22965 , the high-severity flaw impacts Spring Framework versions 5.3.0 to 5.3.17, 5.2.0 to 5.2.19, and other older, unsupported versions. Users are recommended to upgrade to versions 5.3.18 or later and 5.2.20 or later. The Spring Framework is a Java framework that offers infrastructure support to develop web applications. "The vulnerability impacts Spring  MVC  [model–view–controller] and Spring WebFlux applications running on [Java Development Kit] 9+," Rossen Stoyanchev of Spring.io  said  in an advisory published Thursday. "The specific exploit requires the application to run on Tomcat as a WAR deployment. If the application is deployed as a Spring Boot executable jar, i.e., the default, it is not vulnerabl

A zero-day remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability has come to light in the Spring framework shortly after a Chinese security researcher  briefly leaked  a  proof-of-concept  (PoC)  exploit  on GitHub before deleting their account. According to cybersecurity firm Praetorian, the unpatched flaw impacts Spring Core on Java Development Kit ( JDK ) versions 9 and later and is a bypass for another vulnerability tracked as  CVE-2010-1622 , enabling an unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary code on the target system. Spring is a  software framework  for building Java applications, including web apps on top of the Java EE (Enterprise Edition) platform. "In certain configurations, exploitation of this issue is straightforward, as it only requires an attacker to send a crafted HTTP request to a vulnerable system," researchers Anthony Weems and Dallas Kaman  said . "However, exploitation of different configurations will require the attacker to do additional research t

Google has rolled out fixes for five security vulnerabilities in its Chrome web browser, including one which it says is being exploited in the wild, making it the  17th such weakness  to be disclosed since the start of the year. Tracked as  CVE-2021-4102 , the flaw relates to a  use-after-free bug  in the V8 JavaScript and WebAssembly engine, which could have severe consequences ranging from corruption of valid data to the execution of arbitrary code. An anonymous researcher has been credited with discovering and reporting the flaw. As it stands, it's not known how the weakness is being abused in real-world attacks, but the internet giant issued a terse statement that said, "it's aware of reports that an exploit for CVE-2021-4102 exists in the wild." This is done so in an attempt to ensure that a majority of users are updated with a fix and prevent further exploitation by other threat actors. CVE-2021-4102 is the second use-after-free vulnerability in V8 the comp

The Apache Software Foundation has released fixes to contain an  actively   exploited  zero-day vulnerability affecting the widely-used Apache Log4j Java-based logging library that could be weaponized to execute malicious code and allow a complete takeover of vulnerable systems. Tracked as  CVE-2021-44228  and by the monikers Log4Shell or LogJam, the issue concerns a case of unauthenticated, remote code execution (RCE) on any application that uses the open-source utility and affects versions Log4j 2.0-beta9 up to 2.14.1. The bug has scored a perfect 10 on 10 in the CVSS rating system, indicative of the severity of the issue. "An attacker who can control log messages or log message parameters can execute arbitrary code loaded from  LDAP  servers when message lookup substitution is enabled," the Apache Foundation  said  in an advisory. "From Log4j 2.15.0, this behavior has been disabled by default." Exploitation can be achieved by a single string of text, which c

Apple reportedly notified several U.S. Embassy and State Department employees that their iPhones may have been targeted by an unknown assailant using state-sponsored spyware created by the controversial Israeli company NSO Group, according to multiple reports from  Reuters  and  The Washington Post . At least 11 U.S. Embassy officials stationed in Uganda or focusing on issues pertaining to the country are said to have  singled out  using iPhones registered to their overseas phone numbers, although the identity of the threat actors behind the intrusions, or the nature of the information sought, remains unknown as yet. The attacks, which were carried out in the last several months, mark the first known time the sophisticated surveillance software has been put to use against U.S. government employees. NSO Group is the maker of Pegasus , military-grade spyware that allows its government clients to stealthily plunder files and photos, eavesdrop on conversations, and track the whereabou

Enterprise software provider Zoho on Friday warned that a newly patched critical flaw in its Desktop Central and Desktop Central MSP is being actively exploited by malicious actors, marking the third security vulnerability in its products to be abused in the wild in a span of four months. The issue, assigned the identifier  CVE-2021-44515 , is an authentication bypass vulnerability that could permit an adversary to circumvent authentication protections and execute arbitrary code in the Desktop Central MSP server. "If exploited, the attackers can gain unauthorized access to the product by sending a specially crafted request leading to remote code execution," Zoho  cautioned  in an  advisory . "As we are noticing indications of exploitation of this vulnerability, we strongly advise customers to update their installations to the latest build as soon as possible." The company has also made available an  Exploit Detection Tool  that will help customers identify sig

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has disclosed that an unidentified threat actor has been exploiting a previously unknown weakness in the FatPipe MPVPN networking devices at least since May 2021 to obtain an initial foothold and maintain persistent access into vulnerable networks, making it the latest company to join the likes of Cisco, Fortinet, Citrix, Pulse Secure that have had their systems exploited in the wild. "The vulnerability allowed APT actors to gain access to an unrestricted file upload function to drop a web shell for exploitation activity with root access, leading to elevated privileges and potential follow-on activity," the agency  said  in an alert published this week. "Exploitation of this vulnerability then served as a jumping off point into other infrastructure for the APT actors." In other words, the zero-day vulnerability enables a remote attacker to upload a file to any location on the filesystem on an affected device. The se

Google researchers on Thursday disclosed that it found a watering hole attack in late August exploiting a now-patched zero-day in macOS operating system and targeting Hong Kong websites related to a media outlet and a prominent pro-democracy labor and political group to deliver a never-before-seen backdoor on compromised machines. "Based on our findings, we believe this threat actor to be a well-resourced group, likely state backed, with access to their own software engineering team based on the quality of the payload code," Google Threat Analysis Group (TAG) researcher Erye Hernandez  said  in a report. Tracked as CVE-2021-30869 (CVSS score: 7.8), the security shortcoming concerns a type confusion vulnerability affecting the XNU kernel component that could cause a malicious application to execute arbitrary code with the highest privileges. Apple originally addressed the issue for macOS Big Sur devices as part of a security update shipped on February 1, only to follow

A new zero-day vulnerability has been disclosed in Palo Alto Networks GlobalProtect VPN that could be abused by an unauthenticated network-based attacker to execute arbitrary code on affected devices with root user privileges. Tracked as CVE-2021-3064 (CVSS score: 9.8), the security weakness impacts PAN-OS 8.1 versions earlier than PAN-OS 8.1.17. Massachusetts-based cybersecurity firm Randori has been credited with discovering and reporting the issue. "The vulnerability chain consists of a method for bypassing validations made by an external web server (HTTP smuggling) and a stack-based buffer overflow," Randori researchers  said . "Exploitation of the vulnerability chain has been proven and allows for remote code execution on both physical and virtual firewall products." However, in a troubling turn of events, the company said it used this exploit as part of its red team engagements for nearly 10 months before disclosing it to Palo Alto Networks in late Septem

Google on Thursday pushed urgent security fixes for its Chrome browser, including a pair of new security weaknesses that the company said are being exploited in the wild, making them the fourth and fifth actively zero-days plugged this month alone. The issues, designated as  CVE-2021-37975 and CVE-2021-37976 , are part of a total of four patches, and concern a  use-after-free flaw  in V8 JavaScript and WebAssembly engine as well as an information leak in core. As is usually the case, the tech giant has refrained from sharing any additional details regarding how these zero-day vulnerabilities were used in attacks so as to allow a majority of users to be updated with the patches, but noted that it's aware that "exploits for CVE-2021-37975 and CVE-2021-37976 exist in the wild." An anonymous researcher has been credited with reporting CVE-2021-37975. The discovery of CVE-2021-37976, on the other hand, involves Clément Lecigne from Google Threat Analysis Group, who was al