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A critical vulnerability uncovered in Real-Time Automation's (RTA) 499ES EtherNet/IP ( ENIP ) stack could open up the industrial control systems to remote attacks by adversaries. RTA's ENIP stack is one of the widely used industrial automation devices and is billed as the "standard for factory floor I/O applications in North America." "Successful exploitation of this vulnerability could cause a denial-of-service condition, and a buffer overflow may allow remote code execution," the US cybersecurity and infrastructure agency (CISA) said in an  advisory . As of yet, no known public exploits have been found to target this vulnerability. However, "according to public search engines for Internet-connected devices (e.g. shodan.io) there are more than 8,000 ENIP-compatible internet-facing devices." Tracked as CVE-2020-25159 , the flaw is rated 9.8 out of 10 in severity by the industry-standard Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) and impacts a...

Sound security budget planning and execution are essential for CIO's/CISO's success. Now, for the first time, the Ultimate Security Budget Plan and Track Excel template ( download here ) provide security executives a clear and intuitive tool to keep track of planned vs. actual spend, ensuring that security needs are addressed while maintaining the budgetary frame. The dynamic nature of the threat landscape and the possibility of the organization being subject to a critical attack, make an unexpected investment in additional products, staff, or services a highly likely scenario that should be considered. Integrating this factor within the initial planning is a challenge for many CISOs encounters. The Ultimate Security Budget Plan & Track template is an excel spreadsheet that comes pre-packaged with the required formulas to continuously measure, every month, the planned and actual security investments, providing immediate visibility into any mismatch between the tw...

Apple is facing the heat for a new feature in macOS Big Sur that allows many of its own apps to bypass firewalls and VPNs, thereby potentially allowing malware to exploit the same shortcoming to access sensitive data stored on users' systems and transmit them to remote servers. The issue was first spotted last month by a Twitter user named Maxwell in a beta version of the operating system. "Some Apple apps bypass some network extensions and VPN Apps," Maxwell  tweeted . "Maps for example can directly access the internet bypassing any NEFilterDataProvider or NEAppProxyProviders you have running." But now that the iPhone maker has released the latest version of macOS to the public on November 12, the behavior has been left unchanged, prompting concerns from security researchers, who say the change is ripe for abuse. Of particular note is the possibility that the bypass can leave macOS systems open to attack, not to mention the inability to limit or block net...

Cybersecurity researchers today unveiled a complex and targeted espionage attack on potential government sector victims in South East Asia that they believe was carried out by a sophisticated Chinese APT group at least since 2018. "The attack has a complex and complete arsenal of droppers, backdoors and other tools involving Chinoxy backdoor, PcShare RAT and FunnyDream backdoor binaries, with forensic artefacts pointing towards a sophisticated Chinese actor," Bitdefender said in a new analysis shared with The Hacker News. It's worth noting that the  FunnyDream  campaign has been previously linked to high-profile government entities in Malaysia, Taiwan, and the Philippines, with a majority of victims located in Vietnam. According to the researchers, not only around 200 machines exhibited attack indicators associated with the campaign, evidence points to the fact the threat actor may have compromised  domain controllers  on the victim's network, allowing them to m...

Cisco has published multiple security advisories concerning critical flaws in Cisco Security Manager (CSM) a week after the networking equipment maker quietly released patches with version 4.22 of the platform. The development comes after Code White researcher Florian Hauser (frycos) yesterday publicly disclosed proof-of-concept ( PoC ) code for as many as 12 security vulnerabilities affecting the  web interface of CSM  that makes it possible for an unauthenticated attacker to achieve remote code execution (RCE) attacks. The flaws were responsibly reported to Cisco's Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) three months ago, on July 13. "Since Cisco PSIRT became unresponsive and the published release 4.22 still doesn't mention any of the vulnerabilities,"  claimed frycos  in a tweet, citing the reasons for going public with the PoCs yesterday. Cisco Security Manager  is an end-to-end enterprise solution that allows organizations to enforce access po...

Cybersecurity researchers took the wraps off a novel supply chain attack in South Korea that abuses legitimate security software and stolen digital certificates to distribute remote administration tools (RATs) on target systems. Attributing the operation to the Lazarus Group, also known as Hidden Cobra , Slovak internet security company ESET said the state-sponsored threat actor leveraged the mandatory requirement that internet users in the country must install additional security software in order to avail Internet banking and essential government services. The attack, while limited in scope, exploits WIZVERA VeraPort, which is billed as a "program designed to integrate and manage internet banking-related installation programs," such as digital certificates issued by the banks to individuals and businesses to secure all transactions and process payments. The development is the latest in a long history of espionage attacks against victims in South Korea, including Opera...

Complexity is the bane of effective cybersecurity. The need to maintain an increasing array of cybersecurity tools to protect organizations from an expanding set of cyber threats is leading to runaway costs, staff inefficiencies, and suboptimal threat response. Small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with limited budgets and staff are significantly impacted. On average, SMEs manage more than a dozen different security tools, making it very difficult for security teams to manage and orchestrate. SMEs are, understandably, looking to consolidate their security tools to make cybersecurity more manageable and cost-effective. The challenge for these companies is to figure out how to consolidate cybersecurity tools without losing needed protections safely. An upcoming webinar is set to help SMEs with this very issue ( sign up here ). The Cybersecurity Complexity Problem Cannot Be Overemphasized Over the past decade (at least), CISOs have continuously lobbied for increased cybersecurity ...

A group of academics from the University of California and Tsinghua University has uncovered a series of critical security flaws that could lead to a revival of DNS cache poisoning attacks. Dubbed " SAD DNS attack " (short for Side-channel AttackeD DNS), the technique makes it possible for a malicious actor to carry out an off-path attack, rerouting any traffic originally destined to a specific domain to a server under their control, thereby allowing them to eavesdrop and tamper with the communications. "This represents an important milestone — the first weaponizable network side channel attack that has serious security impacts," the researchers said. "The attack allows an off-path attacker to inject a malicious DNS record into a DNS cache." Tracked as CVE-2020-25705, the findings were presented at the ACM Conference on Computer, and Communications Security (CCS '20) held this week. The flaw affects operating systems Linux 3.18-5.10, Windows Serv...

A hackers-for-hire operation has been discovered using a strain of previously undocumented malware to target South Asian financial institutions and global entertainment companies. Dubbed " CostaRicto " by Blackberry researchers, the campaign appears to be the handiwork of APT mercenaries who possess bespoke malware tooling and complex VPN proxy and SSH tunneling capabilities. "CostaRicto targets are scattered across different countries in Europe, Americas, Asia, Australia and Africa, but the biggest concentration appears to be in South Asia (especially India, Bangladesh and Singapore and China), suggesting that the threat actor could be based in that region, but working on a wide range of commissions from diverse clients," the researchers said. The modus operandi in itself is quite straight-forward. Upon gaining an initial foothold in the target's environment via stolen credentials, the attacker proceeds to set up an SSH tunnel to download a backdoor and a p...

Cybersecurity researchers today disclosed a new kind of modular backdoor that targets point-of-sale (POS) restaurant management software from Oracle in an attempt to pilfer sensitive payment information stored in the devices. The backdoor — dubbed "ModPipe" — impacts Oracle MICROS Restaurant Enterprise Series (RES) 3700 POS systems, a widely used software suite in restaurants and hospitality establishments to efficiently handle POS, inventory, and labor management. A majority of the identified targets are primarily located in the US. "What makes the backdoor distinctive are its downloadable modules and their capabilities, as it contains a custom algorithm designed to gather RES 3700 POS database passwords by decrypting them from Windows registry values," ESET researchers said in an analysis . "Exfiltrated credentials allow ModPipe's operators access to database contents, including various definitions and configuration, status tables and information ab...

If organizations want to get serious about software security, they need to empower their engineers to play a defensive role against cyberattacks as they craft their code. The problem is, developers haven't had the most inspiring introduction to security training over the years, and anything that can be done to make their experience more engaging, productive, and fun is going to be a powerful motivator in helping them gain valuable secure coding skills. And after dedicating precious time to mastering new abilities that can help beat attackers at their own game, the opportunity to test these new powers is not easily found in a safe environment. So, what is a battle-hardened, security-aware engineer to do? A new feature released on the Secure Code Warrior platform, named ' Missions ,' is a challenge category that elevates users from the recall of learned security knowledge to the application of it in a real-world simulation environment. This scaffolded, microlearning app...

Google has patched two more zero-day flaws in the Chrome web browser for desktop, making it the fourth and fifth actively exploited vulnerabilities addressed by the search giant in recent weeks. The company released  86.0.4240.198  for Windows, Mac, and Linux, which it said will be rolling out over the coming days/weeks to all users. Tracked as CVE-2020-16013 and CVE-2020-16017, the flaws were discovered and reported to Google by "anonymous" sources, unlike previous cases, which were uncovered by the company's Project Zero elite security team. Google acknowledged that exploits for both the vulnerabilities exist in the wild but stopped short of sharing more specifics to allow a majority of users to install the fixes. According to the release notes, the two flaws are: CVE-2020-16013:  An "inappropriate implementation" of its V8 JavaScript rendering engine was reported on November 9. CVE-2020-16017:  An  use-after-free  memory corruption issue in Chro...

A wave of cyberattacks against retailers running the Magento 1.x e-commerce platform earlier this September has been attributed to one single group, according to the latest research. "This group has carried out a large number of diverse Magecart attacks that often compromise large numbers of websites at once through supply chain attacks, such as the Adverline incident , or through the use of exploits such as in the September Magento 1 compromises," RiskIQ said in an analysis published today. Collectively called Cardbleed , the attacks targeted at least 2,806 online storefronts running Magento 1.x, which reached end-of-life as of June 30, 2020. Injecting e-skimmers on shopping websites to steal credit card details is a tried-and-tested modus operandi of Magecart, a consortium of different hacker groups who target online shopping cart systems. These virtual credit card skimmers, also known as formjacking attacks , are typically JavaScript code that the operators stealth...

Microsoft formally released fixes for 112 newly discovered security vulnerabilities as part of its  November 2020 Patch Tuesday , including an actively exploited zero-day flaw disclosed by Google's security team last week. The rollout addresses flaws, 17 of which are rated as Critical, 93 are rated as Important, and two are rated Low in severity, once again bringing the patch count over 110 after a drop last month. The security updates encompass a range of software, including Microsoft Windows, Office and Office Services and Web Apps, Internet Explorer, Edge, ChakraCore, Exchange Server, Microsoft Dynamics, Windows Codecs Library, Azure Sphere, Windows Defender, Microsoft Teams, and Visual Studio. Chief among those fixed is  CVE-2020-17087  (CVSS score 7.8), a buffer overflow flaw in Windows Kernel Cryptography Driver ("cng.sys") that was  disclosed on October 30  by the Google Project Zero team as being used in conjunction with a Chrome zero-day to co...

Four months after security researchers uncovered a " Tetrade " of four Brazilian banking Trojans targeting financial institutions in Brazil, Latin America, and Europe, new findings show that the criminals behind the operation have expanded their tactics to infect mobile devices with spyware. According to Kaspersky's Global Research and Analysis Team (GReAT), the Brazil-based threat group Guildma has deployed " Ghimob ," an Android banking Trojan targeting financial apps from banks, fintech companies, exchanges, and cryptocurrencies in Brazil, Paraguay, Peru, Portugal, Germany, Angola, and Mozambique. "Ghimob is a full-fledged spy in your pocket: once infection is completed, the hacker can access the infected device remotely, completing the fraudulent transaction with the victim's smartphone, so as to avoid machine identification, security measures implemented by financial institutions and all their anti-fraud behavioral systems," the cybersecur...

Enterprises depend on SaaS applications for countless functions, like collaboration, marketing, file sharing, and more. But problematically, they often lack the resources to configure those apps to prevent cyberattacks, data exfiltration, and other risks. Catastrophic and costly data breaches result from SaaS security configuration errors. The Verizon 2020 Data Breach Investigations Report found that errors are the second largest cause of data breaches, accounting for about one in three breaches. Of those, misconfigurations are by far the most common, often resulting in the exposure of databases or file system contents directly on a cloud service. Businesses tend to be as vulnerable as the weakest security settings they have enabled for their SaaS applications. To illustrate, Adaptive Shield's team has discovered SaaS setting errors that leave companies open to one-click corporate espionage, exposing their entire cloud, along with massive amounts of video conferencing data in t...

Multiple software products from Adobe, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, and Samsung were successfully pwned with previously unseen exploits in  Tianfu Cup 2020 , the third edition of the international cybersecurity contest held in the city of Chengdu, China. "Many mature and hard targets have been pwned on this year's contest," the event organizers  said . "11 out of 16 targets cracked with 23 successful demos." The hacking competition showed off hacking attempts against a  number of platforms , including: Adobe PDF Reader Apple iPhone 11 Pro running iOS 14 and Safari browser ASUS RT-AX86U router CentOS 8 Docker Community Edition Google Chrome Microsoft Windows 10 v2004 Mozilla Firefox Samsung Galaxy S20 running Android 10 TP-Link TL-WDR7660 router VMware ESXi hypervisor The Tianfu Cup, analogous to Pwn2Own, was started in 2018 following a  government regulation  in the country that barred security researchers from participating in internati...

Apple on Thursday released multiple security updates to patch three zero-day vulnerabilities that were revealed as being actively exploited in the wild. Rolled out as part of its iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and watchOS updates, the flaws reside in the FontParser component and the kernel, allowing adversaries to remotely execute arbitrary code and run malicious programs with kernel-level privileges. The zero-days were discovered and reported to Apple by Google's Project Zero security team. "Apple is aware of reports that an exploit for this issue exists in the wild," the iPhone maker said of the three zero-days without giving any additional details so as to allow a vast majority of users to install the updates. The list of impacted devices includes iPhone 5s and later, iPod touch 6th and 7th generation, iPad Air, iPad mini 2 and later, and Apple Watch Series 1 and later. The fixes are available in versions iOS 12.4.9 and 14.2, iPadOS 14.2, watchOS 5.3.9, 6.2.9, and 7.1, an...