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Google Project Zero's security researcher has discovered a critical remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability in Ghostscript—an open source interpreter for Adobe Systems' PostScript and PDF page description languages. Written entirely in C, Ghostscript is a package of software that runs on different platforms, including Windows, macOS, and a wide variety of Unix systems, offering software the ability to convert PostScript language files (or EPS) to many raster formats, such as PDF, XPS, PCL or PXL. A lot of popular PDF and image editing software, including ImageMagick and GIMP, use Ghostscript library to parse the content and convert file formats. Ghostscript suite includes a built-in -dSAFER sandbox protection option that handles untrusted documents, preventing unsafe or malicious PostScript operations from being executed. However, Google Project Zero team researcher Tavis Ormandy discovered that Ghostscript contains multiple -dSAFER sandbox bypass vulnerabilities,...

Security researchers at Kaspersky Labs have uncovered a new, complex malware campaign that has been targeting customers of several Mexican banking institutions since at least 2013. Dubbed Dark Tequila , the campaign delivers an advanced keylogger malware that managed to stay under the radar for five years due to its highly targeted nature and a few evasion techniques. Dark Tequila has primarily been designed to steal victims' financial information from a long list of online banking sites, as well as login credentials to popular websites, ranging from code versioning repositories to public file storage accounts and domain registrars. The list of targeted sites includes "Cpanels, Plesk, online flight reservation systems, Microsoft Office 365, IBM Lotus Notes clients, Zimbra email, Bitbucket, Amazon, GoDaddy, Register, Namecheap, Dropbox, Softlayer, Rackspace, and other services," the researchers say in a blog post . The malware gets delivered to the victims' comp...

Google was in the news last week for a misleading claim that "with Location History off, the places you go are no longer stored," which is not true. Now, the search engine giant is once again in the news after a San Diego man has filed the first lawsuit against Google over this issue. Last week, the Associated Press investigation revealed that the search engine giant tracks movements of millions of iPhone and Android device users, even if they have disabled the "Location History" setting to prevent it. However, it turned out that to fully opt-out of having your location activities stored by Google, you also have to disable the 'Web and App Activity' control as well, about which the company has mentioned deep into its product documentation. In response to the AP investigation, Google defended itself by saying, "there are a number of different ways that Google may use location to improve people's experience," and that "we provide c...

SaaS Adoption is Skyrocketing, Resilience Hasn't Kept Pace SaaS platforms have revolutionized how businesses operate. They simplify collaboration, accelerate deployment, and reduce the overhead of managing infrastructure. But with their rise comes a subtle, dangerous assumption: that the convenience of SaaS extends to resilience. It doesn't. These platforms weren't built with full-scale data protection in mind . Most follow a shared responsibility model — wherein the provider ensures uptime and application security, but the data inside is your responsibility. In a world of hybrid architectures, global teams, and relentless cyber threats, that responsibility is harder than ever to manage. Modern organizations are being stretched across: Hybrid and multi-cloud environments with decentralized data sprawl Complex integration layers between IaaS, SaaS, and legacy systems Expanding regulatory pressure with steeper penalties for noncompliance Escalating ransomware threats and inside...

Microsoft claims to have uncovered another new Russian hacking attempts targeting United States' Senate and conservative think tanks ahead of the 2018 midterm elections. The tech giant said Tuesday that the APT28 hacking group—also known as Strontium, Fancy Bear , Sofacy, Sednit, and Pawn Storm, which is believed to be tied to the Russian government—created at least six fake websites related to US Senate and conservative organizations to trick its visitors and hack into their computers. Three fake web domains were intended to look as if they belonged to the U.S. Senate, while one non-political website spoofed Microsoft's own online products. The two other phony websites were designed to mimic two U.S. conservative organizations: The Hudson Institute — a conservative Washington think tank hosting extended discussions on topics including cybersecurity, among other important activities. The International Republican Institute (IRI) — a nonprofit group that promotes ...

Well, there's something quite embarrassing for Apple fans. Though Apple servers are widely believed to be unhackable, a 16-year-old high school student proved that nothing is impossible. The teenager from Melbourne, Australia, managed to break into Apple servers and downloaded some 90GB of secure files, including extremely secure authorized keys used to grant login access to users, as well as access multiple user accounts. The teen told the authorities that he hacked Apple because he was a huge fan of the company and "dreamed of" working for the technology giant. What's more embarrassing? The teen, whose name is being withheld as he's still a minor, hacked the company's servers not once, but numerous times over the course of more than a year, and Apple's system administrators failed to stop their users' data from being stolen. When Apple finally noticed the intrusion, the company contacted the FBI, which took the help of the Australian Fede...

Sam Thomas, a security researcher from Secarma, has discovered a new exploitation technique that could make it easier for hackers to trigger critical deserialization vulnerabilities in PHP programming language using previously low-risk considered functions. The new technique leaves hundreds of thousands of web applications open to remote code execution attacks, including websites powered by some popular content management systems like WordPress and Typo3. PHP unserialization or object injection vulnerabilities were initially documented in 2009, which could allow an attacker to perform different kinds of attacks by supplying malicious inputs to the unserialize() PHP function. If you are unaware, serialization is the process of converting data objects into a plain string, and unserialize function help program recreate an object back from a string. Thomas found that an attacker can use low-risk functions against Phar archives to trigger deserialization attack without requiring...

With the release of Chrome 68, Google prominently marks all non-HTTPS websites as 'Not Secure' on its browser to make the web a more secure place for Internet users. If you haven't yet, there is another significant reason to immediately switch to the latest version of the Chrome web browser. Ron Masas, a security researcher from Imperva, has discovered a vulnerability in web browsers that could allow attackers to find everything other web platforms, like Facebook and Google, knows about you—and all they need is just trick you into visiting a website. The vulnerability, identified as CVE-2018-6177 , takes advantage of a weakness in audio/video HTML tags and affects all web browsers powered by "Blink Engine," including Google Chrome. To illustrate the attack scenario, the researcher took an example of Facebook, a popular social media platform that collects in-depth profiling information on its users, including their age, gender, where you have been (loca...

Instagram has been hit by a widespread hacking campaign that appears to stem from Russia and have affected hundreds of users over the past week, leaving them locked out of their accounts. A growing number of Instagram users are taking to social media, including Twitter and Reddit, to report a mysterious hack which involves locking them out of their account with their email addresses changed to .ru domains. According to victims, their account names, profile pictures, passwords, email addresses associated with their Instagram accounts, and even connected Facebook accounts are being changed in the attack. Many of the affected Instagram users are also complaining about their profile photos replaced with stills from popular films, including Despicable Me 3 and Pirates of the Caribbean. Although it is still unknown who is behind the widespread hack of Instagram accounts, the use of the email addresses originating from Russian email provider mail.ru may indicate a Russian hacker or...

Phishing works no matter how hard a company tries to protect its customers or employees. Security researchers have been warning of a new phishing attack that cybercriminals and email scammers are using in the wild to bypass the Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) mechanism implemented by widely used email services like Microsoft Office 365. Microsoft Office 365 is an all-in-solution for users that offers several different online services, including Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Lync Online and other Office Web Apps, like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote. On the top of these services, Microsoft also offers an artificial intelligence and machine learning powered security protection to help defend against potential phishing and other threats by going one level deep to scan the links in the email bodies to look for any blacklisted or suspicious domain. But as I said, phishers always find a way to bypass security protections in order to victimize users. Just ...

A former Microsoft network engineer who was charged in April this year has now been sentenced to 18 months in prison after pleading guilty to money laundering in connection with the Reveton ransomware. Reveton malware is old ransomware, also known as scareware or police ransomware that instead of encrypting files locks the screen of victims' computers and displays a message purporting to come from a national law enforcement agency. The splash screen of the malware was designed to falsely tell unsuspecting victims that they have been caught doing illegal or malicious activities online or the law enforcement had found illegal material on their computer, forcing users to make pay a "fine" of $200-300 within 48 hours to regain access to their computers. Raymond Odigie Uadiale, 41-year-old, who worked as a Microsoft network engineer, is not the actual author of the Reveton ransomware , but he helped the Reveton distributor, residing in the UK and identified as the online...

2018 has been quite a tough year for Intel. While the chip-maker giant is still dealing with Meltdown and Spectre processor vulnerabilities, yet another major speculative execution flaw has been revealed in Intel's Core and Xeon lines of processors that may leave users vulnerable to cyber-attacks. Dubbed Foreshadow , alternatively called L1 Terminal Fault or L1TF, the new attacks include three new speculative execution side-channel vulnerabilities affecting Intel processors. The Foreshadow attacks could allow a hacker or malicious application to gain access to the sensitive data stored in a computer's memory or third-party clouds, including files, encryption keys, pictures, or passwords. The three Foreshadow vulnerabilities have been categorized into two variants: 1.) Foreshadow Foreshadow ( PDF ) targets a new technology originally been designed to protect select code and users' data from disclosure or modification, even if the entire system falls under a...

Get your update caps on. Just a few minutes ago Microsoft released its latest monthly Patch Tuesday update for August 2018, patching a total of 60 vulnerabilities, of which 19 are rated as critical. The updates patch flaws in Microsoft Windows, Edge Browser, Internet Explorer, Office, ChakraCore, .NET Framework, Exchange Server, Microsoft SQL Server and Visual Studio. Two of these vulnerabilities patched by the tech giant is listed as publicly known and being exploited in the wild at the time of release. According to the advisory released by Microsoft, all 19 critical-rated vulnerabilities lead to remote code execution (RCE), some of which could eventually allow attackers to take control of the affected system if exploited successfully. Besides this, Microsoft has also addressed 39 important flaws, one moderate and one low in severity. Here below we have listed brief details of a few critical and publically exploited important vulnerabilities: Internet Explorer Memory Co...

Adobe has released August 2018 security patch updates for a total of 11 vulnerabilities in its products, two of which are rated as critical that affect Adobe Acrobat and Reader software. The vulnerabilities addressed in this month updates affect Adobe Flash Player, Creative Cloud Desktop Application, Adobe Experience Manager, Adobe Acrobat and Reader applications. None of the security vulnerabilities patched this month were either publicly disclosed or found being actively exploited in the wild. Adobe Acrobat and Reader (Windows and macOS) Security researchers from Trend Micro's Zero Day Initiative and Cybellum Technologies have discovered and reported two critical arbitrary code execution vulnerabilities respectively in Acrobat DC and Acrobat Reader DC for Windows and macOS. According to the Adobe advisory, the flaw (CVE-2018-12808) reported by Cybellum Technologies is an out-of-bounds write flaw, whereas the bug (CVE-2018-12799) reported by Zero Day Initiative is an...

What maximum a remote attacker can do just by having your Fax machine number? Believe it or not, but your fax number is literally enough for a hacker to gain complete control over the printer and possibly infiltrate the rest of the network connected to it. Check Point researchers have revealed details of two critical remote code execution (RCE) vulnerabilities they discovered in the communication protocols used in tens of millions of fax machines globally. You might be thinking who uses Fax these days! Well, Fax is not a thing of the past. With more than 300 million fax numbers and 45 million fax machines in use globally, Fax is still popular among several business organizations, regulators, lawyers, bankers, and real estate firms. Since most fax machines are today integrated into all-in-one printers, connected to a WiFi network and PSTN phone line, a remote attacker can simply send a specially-crafted image file via fax to exploit the reported vulnerabilities and seize co...

Security researchers at Check Point Software Technologies have discovered a new attack vector against the Android operating system that could potentially allow attackers to silently infect your smartphones with malicious apps or launch denial of service attacks. Dubbed Man-in-the-Disk , the attack takes advantage of the way Android apps utilize 'External Storage' system to store app-related data, which if tampered could result in code injection in the privileged context of the targeted application. It should be noted that apps on the Android operating system can store its resources on the device in two locations—internal storage and external storage. Google itself offers guidelines to Android application developers urging them to use internal storage, which is an isolated space allocated to each application protected using Android's built-in sandbox, to store their sensitive files or data. However, researchers found that many popular apps—including Google Translate ...

Google tracks you everywhere, even if you explicitly tell it not to. Every time a service like Google Maps wants to use your location, Google asks your permission to allow access to your location if you want to use it for navigating, but a new investigation shows that the company does track you anyway. An investigation by Associated Press revealed that many Google services on Android and iPhone devices store records of your location data even when you have paused "Location History" on your mobile devices. Disabling " Location History " in the privacy settings of Google applications should prevent Google from keeping track of your every movement, as its own support page states: "You can turn off Location History at any time. With Location History off, the places you go are no longer stored." However, AP found that even with Location History turned off, some Google apps automatically store "time-stamped location data" on users without ask...

Your Mac computer running the Apple's latest High Sierra operating system can be hacked by tweaking just two lines of code, a researcher demonstrated at the Def Con security conference on Sunday. Patrick Wardle, an ex-NSA hacker and now Chief Research Officer of Digita Security, uncovered a critical zero-day vulnerability in the macOS operating system that could allow a malicious application installed in the targeted system to virtually "click" objects without any user interaction or consent. To know, how dangerous it can go, Wardle explains : "Via a single click, countless security mechanisms may be completely bypassed. Run untrusted app? Click...allowed. Authorize keychain access? Click...allowed. Load 3rd-party kernel extension? Click...allowed. Authorize outgoing network connection? click ...allowed." Wardle described his research into "synthetic" interactions with a user interface (UI) as "The Mouse is Mightier than the Sword," ...

Bought a new Android phone? What if I say your brand new smartphone can be hacked remotely? Nearly all Android phones come with useless applications pre-installed by manufacturers or carriers, usually called bloatware, and there's nothing you can do if any of them has a backdoor built-in—even if you're careful about avoiding sketchy apps. That's exactly what security researchers from mobile security firm Kryptowire demonstrated at the DEF CON security conference on Friday. Researchers disclosed details of 47 different vulnerabilities deep inside the firmware and default apps (pre-installed and mostly non-removable) of 25 Android handsets that could allow hackers to spy on users and factory reset their devices, putting millions of Android devices at risk of hacking. At least 11 of those vulnerable smartphones are manufactured by companies including Asus, ZTE, LG, and the Essential Phone, and being distributed by US carriers like Verizon and AT&T. Other majo...