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As software supply chain security becomes more and more crucial, security, DevSecOps, and DevOps teams are more challenged than ever to build transparent trust in the software they deliver or use. In fact, in Gartner recently published their 2022 cybersecurity predictions - not only do they anticipate the continued expansion of attack surfaces in the near future, they also list digital supply chain as a major rising attack surface and one of the top trends to follow in 2022. After all, any software is only as secure as the weakest link in its supply chain. One bad component, any malicious access to your development environment—or any vulnerability in your software's delivery life cycle—and you risk your code's integrity, your customers, and your reputation.  Scribe Security  recently launched a new platform that claims to address these urgent needs by enabling its users to build trust in their software across teams and organizations. According to Scribe Security, SBOM is a ...

Google on Wednesday officially rolled out support for passkeys, the next-generation authentication standard, to both Android and Chrome. "Passkeys are a significantly safer replacement for passwords and other phishable authentication factors," the tech giant  said . "They cannot be reused, don't leak in server breaches, and protect users from phishing attacks." The feature was  first announced  in May 2022 as part of a broader push to support a common passwordless sign-in standard. Passkeys, established by the FIDO Alliance and also backed by  Apple and Microsoft , aim to replace standard passwords with unique digital keys that are stored locally on the device. To that end, creating a passkey requires confirmation from the end-user about the account that will be used to log in to the online service, followed by using their biometric information or the  device   passcode . Signing in to a website on a mobile device is also a simple two-step process th...

In a US SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission)  8-K filing , Omnicell, the healthcare technology provider, revealed that some of its products, services, and internal systems were affected by ransomware.  Upon detecting the incident, the medication management systems provider took immediate action to contain the attack and ensure continued operation. In its  10-Q form  filing, Omnicell disclosed that cyber-attacks or data breaches disrupted its business.  Will you be the next victim? If you overlook the importance of data protection, attackers can get you in no time.  Explore the  impact of the data breach  on the healthcare sector and what preventive measures can be taken against such attacks. Omnicell Announced Data Breach  Founded in 1992, Omnicell is a leading provider of medication management solutions for hospitals, long-term care facilities, and retail pharmacies.  On May 4, 2022 , Omnicell's IT systems and third-party clo...

AI agents promise to automate everything from financial reconciliations to incident response. Yet every time an AI agent spins up a workflow, it has to authenticate somewhere; often with a high-privilege API key, OAuth token, or service account that defenders can't easily see. These "invisible" non-human identities (NHIs) now outnumber human accounts in most cloud environments, and they have become one of the ripest targets for attackers. Astrix's Field CTO Jonathan Sander put it bluntly in a recent Hacker News webinar : "One dangerous habit we've had for a long time is trusting application logic to act as the guardrails. That doesn't work when your AI agent is powered by LLMs that don't stop and think when they're about to do something wrong. They just do it." Why AI Agents Redefine Identity Risk Autonomy changes everything: An AI agent can chain multiple API calls and modify data without a human in the loop. If the underlying credential is exposed or overprivileged, each addit...

A vulnerability in Siemens Simatic programmable logic controller (PLC) can be exploited to retrieve the hard-coded, global private cryptographic keys and seize control of the devices. "An attacker can use these keys to perform multiple advanced attacks against Siemens SIMATIC devices and the related  TIA Portal , while bypassing all four of its  access level protections ," industrial cybersecurity company Claroty  said  in a new report. "A malicious actor could use this secret information to compromise the entire SIMATIC S7-1200/1500 product line in an irreparable way." The critical vulnerability, assigned the identifier  CVE-2022-38465 , is rated 9.3 on the CVSS scoring scale and has been addressed by Siemens as part of security updates issued on October 11, 2022. The list of impacted products and versions is below - SIMATIC Drive Controller family (all versions before 2.9.2) SIMATIC ET 200SP Open Controller CPU 1515SP PC2, including SIPLUS variants (...

Microsoft's Patch Tuesday update for the month of October has addressed a total of  85 security vulnerabilities , including fixes for an actively exploited zero-day flaw in the wild. Of the 85 bugs, 15 are rated Critical, 69 are rated Important, and one is rated Moderate in severity. The update, however, does not include mitigations for the  actively exploited   ProxyNotShell  flaws in  Exchange Server . The  patches  come alongside  updates to resolve 12 other flaws  in the Chromium-based Edge browser that have been released since the beginning of the month. Topping the list of this month's patches is  CVE-2022-41033  (CVSS score: 7.8), a privilege escalation vulnerability in Windows COM+ Event System Service. An anonymous researcher has been credited with reporting the issue. "An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could gain SYSTEM privileges," the company said in an advisory, cautioning that the shortcom...

The operators behind the BazaCall call back phishing method have continued to evolve with updated social engineering tactics to deploy malware on targeted networks. The scheme eventually acts as an entry point to conduct financial fraud or facilitate the delivery of next-stage payloads such as ransomware, cybersecurity company Trellix  said  in a report published last week. Primary targets of the latest attack waves include the U.S., Canada, China, India, Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, and the U.K. BazaCall , also called BazarCall, first gained popularity in 2020 for its novel approach of distributing the BazarBackdoor (aka BazarLoader) malware by manipulating potential victims into calling a phone number specified in decoy email messages. These email baits aim to create a false sense of urgency, informing the recipients about renewal of a trial subscription for, say, an antivirus service. The messages also urge them to contact their support desk to cancel the plan, or ...

A now-patched security flaw in the vm2 JavaScript sandbox module could be abused by a remote adversary to break out of security barriers and perform arbitrary operations on the underlying machine. "A threat actor can bypass the sandbox protections to gain remote code execution rights on the host running the sandbox," GitHub  said  in an advisory published on September 28, 2022. The issue, tracked as CVE-2022-36067 and codenamed Sandbreak, carries a maximum severity rating of 10 on the CVSS vulnerability scoring system. It has been addressed in  version 3.9.11  released on August 28, 2022. vm2 is a  popular Node library  that's used to run untrusted code with allowlisted built-in modules. It's also one of the most widely downloaded software, accounting for nearly 3.5 million downloads per week. The  shortcoming  is rooted in the error mechanism in Node.js to escape the sandbox, according to application security firm Oxeye, which  discov...

The White House has recently announced a $1 billion cyber security grant program that is designed to help state and local governments improve their cyber defenses, especially about protecting critical infrastructure. The  recent executive order  stems from the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill that was signed almost a year ago. That bill allocated $1 billion for  protecting critical infrastructure against cyber-attack  in the wake of a series of high-profile ransomware attacks such as the one that brought down the Colonial Pipeline.  Those government agencies who wish to take advantage of these funding opportunities must submit a grant proposal by mid-November. Proposals are only being accepted for the sixty days following the program's announcement. Grant recipients can use the funding to invest in new cybersecurity initiatives or to make improvements to existing defenses. Awardees are guaranteed to receive a minimum of $2 million. However, the program's req...

Cyber criminals are using a previously undocumented phishing-as-a-service (PhaaS) toolkit called  Caffeine  to effectively scale up their attacks and distribute nefarious payloads. "This platform has an intuitive interface and comes at a relatively low cost while providing a multitude of features and tools to its criminal clients to orchestrate and automate core elements of their phishing campaigns," Mandiant  said  in a new report. Some of the core features offered by the platform comprise the ability to craft customized phishing kits, manage redirect pages, dynamically generate URLs that host the payloads, and track the success of the campaigns. The development comes a little over a month after Resecurity took the wraps off another PhaaS service dubbed  EvilProxy  that's offered for sale on dark web criminal forums. But unlike EvilProxy, whose operators are known to vet prospective customers before activating the subscriptions, Caffeine is notable f...

Fortinet on Monday revealed that the newly patched critical security vulnerability impacting its firewall and proxy products is being actively exploited in the wild. Tracked as  CVE-2022-40684  (CVSS score: 9.6), the flaw relates to an authentication bypass in FortiOS, FortiProxy, and FortiSwitchManager that could allow a remote attacker to perform unauthorized operations on the administrative interface via specially crafted HTTP(S) requests. "Fortinet is aware of an instance where this vulnerability was exploited, and recommends immediately validating your systems against the following indicator of compromise in the device's logs: user='Local_Process_Access,'" the company  noted  in an advisory. The list of impacted devices is below - FortiOS version 7.2.0 through 7.2.1 FortiOS version 7.0.0 through 7.0.6 FortiProxy version 7.2.0 FortiProxy version 7.0.0 through 7.0.6 FortiSwitchManager version 7.2.0, and FortiSwitchManager version 7.0.0 Updates hav...

A new piece of research has detailed the increasingly sophisticated nature of the malware toolset employed by an advanced persistent threat (APT) group named Earth Aughisky . "Over the last decade, the group has continued to make adjustments in the tools and malware deployments on specific targets located in Taiwan and, more recently, Japan," Trend Micro  disclosed  in a technical profile last week. Earth Aughisky, also known as  Taidoor , is a cyber espionage group that's known for its ability to abuse legitimate accounts, software, applications, and other weaknesses in the network design and infrastructure for its own ends. While the Chinese threat actor has been known to primarily target organizations in Taiwan, victimology patterns observed towards late 2017 indicate an expansion to Japan. The most commonly targeted industry verticals include government, telcom, manufacturing, heavy, technology, transportation, and healthcare. Attack chains mounted by the group...

Threat actors associated with the notorious Emotet malware are continually shifting their tactics and command-and-control (C2) infrastructure to escape detection, according to new research from VMware. Emotet  is the work of a threat actor tracked as Mummy Spider (aka TA542), emerging in June 2014 as a banking trojan before morphing into an all-purpose loader in 2016 that's capable of delivering second-stage payloads such as ransomware. While the botnet's infrastructure was  taken down  as part of a coordinated law enforcement operation in January 2021, Emotet bounced back in November 2021 through another malware known as  TrickBot . Emotet's resurrection, orchestrated by the now-defunct Conti team, has since paved the way for Cobalt Strike infections and, more recently, ransomware attacks involving  Quantum and BlackCat . "The ongoing adaptation of Emotet's execution chain is one reason the malware has been successful for so long," researchers from VMwa...

Chipmaker Intel has confirmed that proprietary source code related to its Alder Lake CPUs has been leaked, following its release by an unknown third-party on 4chan and GitHub last week. The published content contains Unified Extensible Firmware Interface ( UEFI ) code for  Alder Lake , the company's 12th generation processors that was originally launched in November 2021. In a statement shared with Tom's Hardware, Intel  said  the leak doesn't expose "any new security vulnerabilities as we do not rely on obfuscation of information as a security measure." It's also encouraging the broader security research community to report any potential issues through its  bug bounty program , adding it's reaching out to customers to notify them of the matter. Besides the UEFI code, the leaked data dump includes a plethora of files and tools, some of which appear to come from firmware vendor Insyde Software. Exact details surrounding the nature of the hack, inclu...

BNB Chain, a blockchain linked to the Binance cryptocurrency exchange, disclosed an exploit on a cross-chain bridge that drained around $100 million in digital assets. "There was an exploit affecting the native cross-chain bridge between BNB Beacon Chain (BEP2) and BNB Smart Chain (BEP20 or BSC), known as 'BSC Token Hub,'" it  said  last week. "The exploit was through a sophisticated forging of the low level proof into one common library." According to Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, the exploit on the cross-chain bridge " resulted in extra BNB ," prompting a  temporary suspension  of the Binance Smart Chain (BSC). "BNB, which stands for 'Build and Build' (formerly called Binance Coin), is the blockchain gas token that 'fuels' transactions on BNB Chain," Binance  noted  earlier this February. No user funds are said to have been impacted, since the vulnerability in the BSC Token Hub bridge enabled the unknown threat actor...

A severe remote code execution vulnerability in Zimbra's enterprise collaboration software and email platform is being actively exploited, with no patch currently available to remediate the issue. The shortcoming, assigned  CVE-2022-41352 , carries a critical-severity rating of CVSS 9.8, providing a pathway for attackers to upload arbitrary files and carry out malicious actions on affected installations. "The vulnerability is due to the method ( cpio ) in which Zimbra's antivirus engine ( Amavis ) scans inbound emails," cybersecurity firm Rapid7  said  in an analysis published this week. The issue is said to have been abused since early September 2022, according to  details  shared on Zimbra forums. While a fix is yet to be released, the software services company is urging users to install the "pax" utility and restart the Zimbra services. "If the  pax package  is not installed, Amavis will fall-back to using cpio, unfortunately the fall-back is ...

Microsoft on Friday  disclosed  it has made more improvements to the  mitigation method  offered as a means to prevent exploitation attempts against the newly disclosed unpatched security flaws in Exchange Server. To that end, the tech giant has revised the blocking rule in IIS Manager from ".*autodiscover\.json.*Powershell.*" to "(?=.*autodiscover\.json)(?=.*powershell)." The list of updated steps to add the URL Rewrite rule is below - Open IIS Manager Select Default Web Site In the Feature View, click URL Rewrite In the Actions pane on the right-hand side, click Add Rule(s)… Select Request Blocking and click OK Add the string "(?=.*autodiscover\.json)(?=.*powershell)" (excluding quotes) Select Regular Expression under Using Select Abort Request under How to block and then click OK Expand the rule and select the rule with the pattern: (?=.*autodiscover\.json)(?=.*powershell) and click Edit under Conditions Change the Condition input from {U...

Fortinet has privately warned its customers of a security flaw affecting FortiGate firewalls and FortiProxy web proxies that could potentially allow an attacker to perform unauthorized actions on susceptible devices. Tracked as CVE-2022-40684 (CVSS score: 9.6), the critical flaw relates to an authentication bypass vulnerability that may permit an unauthenticated adversary to carry out arbitrary operations on the administrative interface via a specially crafted HTTP(S) request. The issue impacts the following versions, and has been addressed in FortiOS versions  7.0.7  and  7.2.2 , and FortiProxy versions 7.0.7 and 7.2.1 released this week: FortiOS - From 7.0.0 to 7.0.6 and from 7.2.0 to 7.2.1 FortiProxy - From 7.0.0 to 7.0.6 and 7.2.0 "Due to the ability to exploit this issue remotely, Fortinet is strongly recommending all customers with the vulnerable versions to perform an immediate upgrade," the company  cautioned  in an alert shared by a securit...

Meta Platforms on Friday disclosed that it had identified over 400 malicious apps on Android and iOS that it said targeted online users with the goal of stealing their Facebook login information. "These apps were listed on the Google Play Store and Apple's App Store and disguised as photo editors, games, VPN services, business apps, and other utilities to trick people into downloading them," the social media behemoth  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. 42.6% of the rogue apps were photo editors, followed by business utilities (15.4%), phone utilities (14.1%), games (11.7%), VPNs (11.7%), and lifestyle apps (4.4%). Interestingly, a majority of the iOS apps posed as ads manager tools for Meta and its Facebook subsidiary. Besides concealing its malicious nature as a set of seemingly harmless apps, the operators of the scheme also published fake reviews that were designed to offset the negative reviews left by users who may have previously downloaded the apps...