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PC maker Dell has issued an update to fix multiple critical privilege escalation vulnerabilities that went undetected since 2009, potentially allowing attackers to gain kernel-mode privileges and cause a denial-of-service condition. The issues, reported to Dell by researchers from SentinelOne on Dec. 1, 2020, reside in a firmware update driver named "dbutil_2_3.sys" that comes pre-installed on its devices. Hundreds of millions of desktops, laptops, notebooks, and tablets manufactured by the company are said to be vulnerable. "Dell dbutil_2_3.sys driver contains an insufficient access control vulnerability which may lead to escalation of privileges, denial-of-service, or information disclosure. Local authenticated user access is required," Dell  said  in an advisory. All five separate flaws have been assigned the CVE identifier CVE-2021-21551 with a CVSS score of 8.8. A breakdown of the shortcomings is as follows -  CVE-2021-21551: Local Elevation Of Privilege...

The maintainers of Exim have  released patches  to remediate as many as 21 security vulnerabilities in its software that could enable unauthenticated attackers to achieve complete remote code execution and gain root privileges. Collectively named  '21Nails ,' the flaws include 11 vulnerabilities that require local access to the server and 10 other weaknesses that could be exploited remotely. The issues were discovered by Qualys and reported to Exim on Oct. 20, 2020. "Some of the vulnerabilities can be chained together to obtain a full remote unauthenticated code execution and gain root privileges on the Exim Server," Bharat Jogi, senior manager at Qualys, said in a public disclosure. "Most of the vulnerabilities discovered by the Qualys Research Team for e.g. CVE-2020-28017 affects all versions of Exim going back all the way to 2004." Exim is a popular mail transfer agent (MTA) used on Unix-like operating systems, with over 60% of the publicly reachable...

Researchers on Tuesday disclosed a novel malware that uses a variety of tricks to stay under the radar and evade detection, while stealthily capable of executing arbitrary commands on infected systems. Called 'Pingback,' the Windows malware leverages Internet Control Message Protocol ( ICMP ) tunneling for covert bot communications, allowing the adversary to utilize ICMP packets to piggyback attack code, according to an analysis published today by Trustwave. Pingback (" oci.dll ") achieves this by getting loaded through a legitimate service called  MSDTC  (Microsoft Distributed Transaction Coordinator) — a component responsible for handling database operations that are distributed over multiple machines — by taking advantage of a method called  DLL search order hijacking , which involves using a genuine application to preload a malicious DLL file. Naming the malware as one of the plugins required for supporting  Oracle ODBC  interface in MSDTC is key to th...

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Ask the average helpdesk technician what they do all day, and they will probably answer by saying that they reset passwords. Sure, helpdesk technicians do plenty of other things too, but in many organizations, a disproportionate number of helpdesk calls are tied to password resets. On the surface, having a  helpdesk technician reset a user's password  probably doesn't seem like a big deal. After all, the technician simply opens Active Directory Users and Computers, right-clicks on the user account, and chooses the Reset Password command from the shortcut menu. Resetting a password in this way is an easy process. Organizations can even opt to use an alternative tool such as the Windows Admin Center or even PowerShell if they prefer. One thing that most people probably don't stop and think about, however, is that even though the steps involved in the password reset process are simple enough, the  process as a whole constitutes a major security risk . Security and the se...

Ivanti, the company behind Pulse Secure VPN appliances, has released a security patch to remediate a critical security vulnerability that was found being actively exploited in the wild by at least two different threat actors. Tracked as  CVE-2021-22893  (CVSS score 10), the flaw concerns "multiple use after free" issues in Pulse Connect Secure that could allow a remote unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary code and take control of the affected system. All Pulse Connect Secure versions prior to 9.1R11.4 are impacted. The flaw came to light on April 20 after FireEye  disclosed  a series of intrusions targeting defense, government, and financial organizations in the U.S. and elsewhere by leveraging critical vulnerabilities in the remote access solution to bypass multi-factor authentication protections and breach enterprise networks. The development promoted the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to issue an  Emergency Directiv...

Apple on Monday released security updates for  iOS ,  macOS , and  watchOS  to address three zero-day flaws and expand patches for a fourth vulnerability that the company said might have been exploited in the wild. The weaknesses all concern WebKit, the browser engine which powers Safari and other third-party web browsers in iOS, allowing an adversary to execute arbitrary code on target devices. A summary of the three security bugs are as follows - CVE-2021-30663:  An integer overflow vulnerability that could be exploited to craft malicious web content, which may lead to code execution. The flaw was addressed with improved input validation. CVE-2021-30665:  A memory corruption issue that could be exploited to craft malicious web content, which may lead to code execution. The flaw was addressed with improved state management. CVE-2021-30666:  A buffer overflow vulnerability that could be exploited to craft malicious web content, which may lead to...

Most mobile app users tend to blindly trust that the apps they download from app stores are safe and secure. But that isn't always the case. To demonstrate the pitfalls and identify vulnerabilities on a large scale, cybersecurity and machine intelligence company CloudSEK recently provided a platform called  BeVigil  where individuals can search and check app security ratings and other security issues before installing an app. A latest  report  shared with The Hacker News detailed how the BeVigil search engine identified over 40 apps - with more than a cumulative 100 million downloads - that had hardcoded private Amazon Web Services (AWS) keys embedded within them, putting their internal networks and their users' data at risk of cyberattacks. BeVigil finds popular apps leaking AWS keys The AWS key leakage was spotted in some of the major apps such as Adobe Photoshop Fix, Adobe Comp, Hootsuite, IBM's Weather Channel, and online shopping services Club Factory and W...

Cybersecurity researchers on Monday disclosed a new malspam campaign distributing a fresh variant of a malware loader called "Buer" written in Rust, illustrating how adversaries are constantly honing their malware toolsets to evade analysis. Dubbed "RustyBuer," the malware is propagated via emails masquerading as shipping notices from DHL Support, and is said to have affected no fewer than 200 organizations across more than 50 verticals since early April. "The new Buer variant is written in Rust, an efficient and easy-to-use programming language that is becoming increasingly popular," Proofpoint researchers  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. "Rewriting the malware in Rust enables the threat actor to better evade existing Buer detection capabilities." First introduced in August of 2019,  Buer  is a modular malware-as-a-service offering that's sold on underground forums and used as a first-stage downloader to deliver additiona...

Iran has been linked to yet another state-sponsored ransomware operation through a contracting company based in the country, according to new analysis. "Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps ( IRGC ) was operating a state-sponsored ransomware campaign through an Iranian contracting company called 'Emen Net Pasargard' (ENP)," cybersecurity firm Flashpoint  said  in its findings summarizing three documents leaked by an anonymous entity named Read My Lips or Lab Dookhtegan between March 19 and April 1 via its Telegram channel. Dubbed "Project Signal," the initiative is said to have kickstarted sometime between late July 2020 and early September 2020, with ENP's internal research organization, named the "Studies Center," putting together a list of unspecified target websites. A second spreadsheet validated by Flashpoint explicitly spelled out the project's financial motivations, with plans to launch the ransomware operations in late...

A threat actor believed to be working on behalf of Chinese state-sponsored interests was recently observed targeting a Russia-based defense contractor involved in designing nuclear submarines for the naval arm of the Russian Armed Forces. The phishing attack, which singled out a general director working at the Rubin Design Bureau, leveraged the infamous "Royal Road" Rich Text Format (RTF) weaponizer to deliver a previously undocumented Windows backdoor dubbed " PortDoor ," according to Cybereason's Nocturnus threat intelligence team. "Portdoor has multiple functionalities, including the ability to do reconnaissance, target profiling, delivery of additional payloads, privilege escalation, process manipulation static detection antivirus evasion, one-byte XOR encryption, AES-encrypted data exfiltration and more," the researchers  said  in a write-up on Friday. Rubin Design Bureau is a submarine design center located in Saint Petersburg, accounting fo...

An "aggressive" financially motivated threat group tapped into a zero-day flaw in SonicWall VPN appliances prior to it being patched by the company to deploy a new strain of ransomware called FIVEHANDS. The group, tracked by cybersecurity firm Mandiant as UNC2447, took advantage of an "improper SQL command neutralization" flaw in the SSL-VPN SMA100 product ( CVE-2021-20016 , CVSS score 9.8) that allows an unauthenticated attacker to achieve remote code execution. "UNC2447 monetizes intrusions by extorting their victims first with FIVEHANDS ransomware followed by aggressively applying pressure through threats of media attention and offering victim data for sale on hacker forums," Mandiant researchers  said . "UNC2447 has been observed targeting organizations in Europe and North America and has consistently displayed advanced capabilities to evade detection and minimize post-intrusion forensics." CVE-2021-20016 is the same  zero-day  that the ...

Microsoft researchers on Thursday disclosed two dozen vulnerabilities affecting a wide range of Internet of Things (IoT) and Operational Technology (OT) devices used in industrial, medical, and enterprise networks that could be abused by adversaries to execute arbitrary code and even cause critical systems to crash. "These remote code execution (RCE) vulnerabilities cover more than 25 CVEs and potentially affect a wide range of domains, from consumer and medical IoT to Industrial IoT, Operational Technology, and industrial control systems,"  said  Microsoft's 'Section 52' Azure Defender for IoT research group. The flaws have been collectively named " BadAlloc ," for they are rooted in standard  memory allocation functions  spanning widely used real-time operating systems (RTOS), embedded software development kits (SDKs), and C standard library (libc) implementations. A lack of proper input validations associated with these memory allocation functions ...

Perhaps due to the nature of the position, the InfoSec leadership roles tend to be solitary ones. CISOs, or their equivalent decision-makers in organizations without the role, have so many constant drains on their attention – keeping their knowledge fresh, building plans to secure their organizations further – that they often find themselves on an island. It's even more challenging for organizations outside the Fortune 2000 that are resource-constrained. Security leaders are expected to know everything and often don't have anyone inside their organization with whom to bounce ideas or even go to for advice. When a crisis arises, they must often go with their gut or guess at the best solution based on their own experiences. Security leaders could often use advice but don't have an outlet for it. Chris Roberts, Chief Security Strategist at Cynet Security, offers a new Slack-based community for InfoSec leaders ( register here ) as a solution. The new InfoSec Leaders Community will fea...

Click Studios, the Australian software firm which confirmed a  supply chain attack  affecting its Passwordstate password management application, has warned customers of an ongoing phishing attack by an unknown threat actor. "We have been advised a bad actor has commenced a phishing attack with a small number of customers having received emails requesting urgent action," the company  said  in an updated advisory released on Wednesday. "These emails are not sent by Click Studios." Last week, Click Studios said attackers had employed sophisticated techniques to compromise Passwordstate's update mechanism, using it to drop malware on user computers. Only customers who performed In-Place Upgrades between April 20, 8:33 PM UTC, and April 22, 0:30 AM UTC are said to be affected. While Passwordstate serves about 29,000 customers, the Adelaide-based firm maintained that the total number of impacted customers is very low. It's also urging users to refrain from po...

The maintainers of Composer, a package manager for PHP, have shipped an update to address a critical vulnerability that could have allowed an attacker to execute arbitrary commands and "backdoor every PHP package," resulting in a supply-chain attack. Tracked as CVE-2021-29472, the security issue was discovered and reported on April 22 by researchers from  SonarSource , following which a hotfix was deployed less than 12 hours later. "Fixed command injection vulnerability in HgDriver/HgDownloader and hardened other VCS drivers and downloaders," Composer  said  its  release notes  for versions 2.0.13 and 1.10.22 published on Wednesday. "To the best of our knowledge the vulnerability has not been exploited." Composer  is billed as a tool for dependency management in PHP, enabling easy installation of packages relevant to a project. It also allows users to install PHP applications that are available on  Packagist , a repository that aggregates all publ...

An adversary known for its  watering hole attacks  against government entities has been linked to a slew of newly detected intrusions targeting various organizations in Central Asia and the Middle East. The malicious activity, collectively named "EmissarySoldier," has been attributed to a threat actor called LuckyMouse, and is said to have happened in 2020 with the goal of obtaining geopolitical insights in the region. The attacks involved deploying a toolkit dubbed SysUpdate (aka Soldier) in a number of breached organizations, including government and diplomatic agencies, telecom providers, a TV media company, and a commercial bank. LuckyMouse , also referred to as APT27 and Emissary Panda, is a sophisticated cyberespionage group that has a history of breaching multiple government networks in Central Asia and the Middle East. The actor has also been linked to cyberattacks aimed at transnational organizations such as the International Civil Aviation Organization ( ICAO )...

Hackers are scanning the internet for weaknesses all the time, and if you don't want your organization to fall victim, you need to be the first to find these weak spots. In other words, you have to adopt a proactive approach to managing your vulnerabilities, and a crucial first step in achieving this is performing a vulnerability assessment. Read this guide to learn how to perform vulnerability assessments in your organization and stay ahead of the hackers. Vulnerability assessment tools Vulnerability assessments are automated processes performed by scanners. This makes them accessible to a wide audience. Many of the scanners are geared towards cybersecurity experts, but there are solutions tailored for IT managers and developers in organizations without dedicated security teams.  Vulnerability scanners come in various types: some excel at network scanning, others at web applications, IoT devices, or container security. If you're a small business, you're likely to find...

Bad actors with suspected ties to China have been behind a wide-ranging cyberespionage campaign targeting military organizations in Southeast Asia for nearly two years, according to new research. Attributing the attacks to a threat actor dubbed " Naikon APT ," cybersecurity firm Bitdefender laid out the ever-changing tactics, techniques, and procedures adopted by the group, including weaving new backdoors named "Nebulae" and "RainyDay" into their data-stealing missions. The malicious activity is said to have been conducted between June 2019 and March 2021. "In the beginning of the operation the threat actors used Aria-Body loader and Nebulae as the first stage of the attack," the researchers  said . "Starting with September 2020, the threat actors included the RainyDay backdoor in their toolkit. The purpose of this operation was cyberespionage and data theft." Naikon (aka Override Panda, Lotus Panda, or Hellsing) has a track recor...