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An unpatched design flaw in the implementation of Microsoft Exchange's Autodiscover protocol has resulted in the leak of approximately 100,000 login names and passwords for Windows domains worldwide. "This is a severe security issue, since if an attacker can control such domains or has the ability to 'sniff' traffic in the same network, they can capture domain credentials in plain text (HTTP basic authentication) that are being transferred over the wire," Guardicore's Amit Serper  said  in a technical report. "Moreover, if the attacker has DNS-poisoning capabilities on a large scale (such as a nation-state attacker), they could systematically syphon out leaky passwords through a large-scale DNS poisoning campaign based on these Autodiscover TLDs [top-level domains]." The Exchange  Autodiscover  service enables users to configure applications such as Microsoft Outlook with minimal user input, allowing just a combination of email addresses and pas...

Security researchers have disclosed an unpatched weakness in Microsoft Windows Platform Binary Table (WPBT) affecting all Windows-based devices since Windows 8 that could be potentially exploited to install a rootkit and compromise the integrity of devices. "These flaws make every Windows system vulnerable to easily-crafted attacks that install fraudulent vendor-specific tables," researchers from Eclypsium  said  in a report published on Monday. "These tables can be exploited by attackers with direct physical access, with remote access, or through manufacturer supply chains. More importantly, these motherboard-level flaws can obviate initiatives like  Secured-core  because of the ubiquitous usage of  ACPI  [Advanced Configuration and Power Interface] and WPBT." WPBT, introduced with Windows 8 in 2012, is a  feature  that enables "boot firmware to provide Windows with a platform binary that the operating system can execute."  In other wor...

Sysadmins know what the risks are of running unpatched services. Given the choice, and unlimited resources, most hardworking administrators will ensure that all systems and services are patched consistently. But things are rarely that simple. Technical resources are limited, and patching can often be more complicated than it appears at first glance. Worse, some services are so hidden in the background, that they just don't make it onto the list of things to be patched. QEMU is one of those services that tend to create difficulties with patching. It works away in the background and is easy to take for granted. Plus, patching QEMU involves significant technical and practical challenges – while requiring enormous resources. In this article, we'll address some of the difficulties around patching QEMU, and point to a solution that takes the toughest bits out of QEMU patching. Ignoring QEMU patching is a big risk You'll probably know about it if you're using QEMU – shor...

An "insidious" new SMS smishing malware has been found targeting Android mobile users in the U.S. and Canada as part of an ongoing campaign that uses SMS text message lures related to COVID-19 regulations and vaccine information in an attempt to steal personal and financial data. Proofpoint's messaging security subsidiary Cloudmark coined the emerging malware "TangleBot." "The malware has been given the moniker TangleBot because of its many levels of obfuscation and control over a myriad of entangled device functions, including contacts, SMS and phone capabilities, call logs, internet access, and camera and microphone," the researchers  said . Besides capabilities to obtain sensitive information, the malware is engineered to control device interaction with banking or financial apps using overlay screens and plunder account credentials from financial activities initiated on the phones. The attacks themselves originate from SMS messages that claim ...

More than one terabyte of data containing 5.5 million files has been left exposed, leaking personal information of over 100,000 customers of a Colombian real estate firm, according to cybersecurity company WizCase. The breach was discovered by Ata Hakçıl and his team in a database owned by Coninsa Ramon H, a company that specializes in architecture, engineering, construction, and real estate services. "There was no need for a password or login credentials to see this information, and the data was not encrypted," the researchers  said  in an exclusive report shared with The Hacker News. The data exposure is the result of a misconfigured Amazon Web Services (AWS) Simple Storage Service (S3) bucket, causing sensitive information such as clients' names, photos, and addresses to be disclosed. The details stored in the bucket range from invoices and income documents to quotes and account statements dating between 2014 and 2021. The complete list of information contained in...

Microsoft has opened the lid on a large-scale phishing-as-a-service (PHaaS) operation that's involved in selling phishing kits and email templates as well as providing hosting and automated services at a low cost, thus enabling cyber actors to purchase phishing campaigns and deploy them with minimal efforts. "With over 100 available phishing templates that mimic known brands and services, the BulletProofLink operation is responsible for many of the phishing campaigns that impact enterprises today," Microsoft 365 Defender Threat Intelligence Team  said  in a Tuesday report. "BulletProofLink (also referred to as BulletProftLink or Anthrax by its operators in various websites, ads, and other promotional materials) is used by multiple attacker groups in either one-off or monthly subscription-based business models, creating a steady revenue stream for its operators." The tech giant said it uncovered the operation during its investigation of a credential phishing...

As many as 11 security vulnerabilities have been disclosed in Nagios network management systems, some of which could be chained to achieve pre-authenticated remote code execution with the highest privileges, as well as lead to credential theft and phishing attacks.  Industrial cybersecurity firm Claroty, which discovered the flaws, said flaws in tools such as Nagios make them an attractive target owing to their "oversight of core servers, devices, and other critical components in the enterprise network." The issues have since been fixed in updates released in August with Nagios XI 5.8.5 or above, Nagios XI Switch Wizard 2.5.7 or above, Nagios XI Docker Wizard 1.13 or above, and Nagios XI WatchGuard 1.4.8 or above. " SolarWinds  and  Kaseya  were likely targeted not only because of their large and influential customer bases, but also because of their respective technologies' access to enterprise networks, whether it was managing IT, operational technology (OT), or ...

One of the determining factors of how much damage a cyber-attack cause is how fast organizations can respond to it. Time to response is critical for security teams, and it is a major hurdle for leaner teams. To help improve this metric and enhance organizations' ability to respond to attacks quickly, many endpoint detection and response (EDR) and extended detection and response (XDR) vendors have started including some form of automation in their platforms to reduce the need for manual intervention. XDR provider Cynet claims that they go beyond existing solutions when it comes to security automation. More than automating individual components, the Cynet 360 platform ( see a live demo here ) offers automation across every phase of incident response – from detection through remediation. The company uses a variety of tools and techniques to keep organizations safe and quickly respond to any emerging threat. How Cynet removes the guesswork from Incident Response  Cynet fully auto...

The U.S. Treasury Department on Tuesday imposed sanctions on Russian cryptocurrency exchange Suex for helping facilitate and launder transactions from at least eight ransomware variants as part of the government's efforts to crack down on a surge in ransomware incidents and make it difficult for bad actors to profit from such attacks using digital currencies. "Virtual currency exchanges such as SUEX are critical to the profitability of ransomware attacks, which help fund additional cybercriminal activity," the department  said  in a press release. "Analysis of known SUEX transactions shows that over 40% of SUEX's known transaction history is associated with illicit actors. SUEX is being designated pursuant to  Executive Order 13694 , as amended, for providing material support to the threat posed by criminal ransomware actors." According to blockchain analytics firm  Chainalysis , SUEX is legally registered in the Czech Republic and operates out of office...

Over the last several years, there have been numerous high-profile security breaches. These breaches have underscored the fact that traditional cyber defenses have become woefully inadequate and that stronger defenses are needed. As such, many organizations have transitioned toward a zero trust security model. A zero trust security model is based on the idea that no IT resource should be trusted implicitly. Prior to the introduction of zero trust security, a user who authenticated into a network was trustworthy for the duration of their session, as was the user's device. In a zero trust model, a user is no longer considered to be trustworthy just because they entered a password at the beginning of their session. Instead, the user's identity is verified through multi-factor authentication, and the user may be prompted to re-authenticate if they attempt to access resources that are particularly sensitive or if the user attempts to do something out of the ordinary. How Complic...

Networking equipment company Netgear has released patches to remediate a high-severity remote code execution vulnerability affecting multiple routers that could be exploited by remote attackers to take control of an affected system. Traced as  CVE-2021-40847  (CVSS score: 8.1), the security weakness impacts the following models - R6400v2 (fixed in firmware version 1.0.4.120) R6700 (fixed in firmware version 1.0.2.26) R6700v3 (fixed in firmware version 1.0.4.120) R6900 (fixed in firmware version 1.0.2.26) R6900P (fixed in firmware version 3.3.142_HOTFIX) R7000 (fixed in firmware version 1.0.11.128) R7000P (fixed in firmware version 1.3.3.142_HOTFIX) R7850 (fixed in firmware version 1.0.5.76) R7900 (fixed in firmware version 1.0.4.46) R8000 (fixed in firmware version 1.0.4.76) RS400 (fixed in firmware version 1.5.1.80) According to GRIMM security researcher Adam Nichols, the vulnerability resides within Circle , a third-party component included in the firmware t...

VMware on Tuesday published a new bulletin warning of as many as 19 vulnerabilities in vCenter Server and Cloud Foundation appliances that a remote attacker could exploit to take control of an affected system. The most urgent among them is an arbitrary file upload vulnerability in the Analytics service (CVE-2021-22005) that impacts vCenter Server 6.7 and 7.0 deployments. "A malicious actor with network access to port 443 on vCenter Server may exploit this issue to execute code on vCenter Server by uploading a specially crafted file," the company  noted ,  adding  "this vulnerability can be used by anyone who can reach vCenter Server over the network to gain access, regardless of the configuration settings of vCenter Server." Although VMware has published  workarounds  for the flaw, the company cautioned that they are "meant to be a temporary solution until updates […] can be deployed." The complete list of flaws patched by the virtualization services ...

Cybersecurity researchers on Tuesday disclosed details of an unpatched zero-day vulnerability in macOS Finder that could be abused by remote adversaries to trick users into running arbitrary commands on the machines. "A vulnerability in macOS Finder allows files whose extension is inetloc to execute arbitrary commands, these files can be embedded inside emails which if the user clicks on them will execute the commands embedded inside them without providing a prompt or warning to the user," SSD Secure Disclosure  said  in a write-up published today. Park Minchan, an independent security researcher, has been credited with reporting the vulnerability which affects macOS versions of Big Sur and prior. The weakness arises due to the manner macOS processes INETLOC files — shortcuts to open internet locations such as RSS feeds, Telnet connections, or other online resources and local files — resulting in a scenario that allows commands embedded in those files to be executed wit...

Unidentified threat actors breached a server running an unpatched, 11-year-old version of Adobe's ColdFusion 9 software in minutes to remotely take over control and deploy file-encrypting Cring ransomware on the target's network 79 hours after the hack. The server, which belonged to an unnamed services company, was used to collect timesheet and accounting data for payroll as well as to host a number of virtual machines, according to a report published by Sophos and shared with The Hacker News. The attacks originated from an internet address assigned to the Ukrainian ISP Green Floid. "Devices running vulnerable, outdated software are low-hanging-fruit for cyberattackers looking for an easy way into a target," Sophos principal researcher Andrew Brandt  said . "The surprising thing is that this server was in active daily use. Often the most vulnerable devices are inactive or ghost machines, either forgotten about or overlooked when it comes to patching and upgra...

A recently discovered wave of malware attacks has been spotted using a variety of tactics to enslave susceptible machines with easy-to-guess administrative credentials to co-opt them into a network with the goal of illegally mining cryptocurrency. "The malware's primary tactic is to spread by taking advantage of vulnerable systems and weak administrative credentials. Once they've been infected, these systems are then used to mine cryptocurrency," Akamai security researcher Larry Cashdollar  said  in a write-up published last week. The PHP malware — codenamed "Capoae" (short for "Сканирование," the Russian word for "Scanning") — is said to be delivered to the hosts via a backdoored addition to a WordPress plugin called "download-monitor," which gets installed after successfully brute-forcing WordPress admin credentials. The attacks also involve the deployment of a  Golang binary  with decryption functionality, with the obfusc...

2020 was a year of relentless disruptions. The protective layer of secured enterprise networks and controlled IT environments of the physical premises did not exist. Over the past year,  CISOs (Chief Information Security Officers)  have had to grapple with the challenges of bolstering the security posture, minimizing risks, and ensuring business continuity in the new normal. The rise in volumes and sophistication of cyberattacks in the rather borderless IT situation only compounded the challenges. All this has necessitated a shift in cybersecurity priorities in 2021. In this article, we have put together the top cybersecurity priorities for 2021 and beyond that will enable businesses to be fully equipped for future disruptions, without compromising on security. Cybersecurity Priorities for 2021 Strengthen the Cybersecurity Fundamentals CISOs must focus on security fundamentals, including asset management, password management, cyber hygiene, configuration,  vulnerabil...