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A widely used NPM package called ' Pac-Resolver ' for the JavaScript programming language has been remediated with a fix for a high-severity remote code execution vulnerability that could be abused to run malicious code inside Node.js applications whenever HTTP requests are sent.  The flaw, tracked as  CVE-2021-23406 , has a severity rating of 8.1 on the CVSS vulnerability scoring system and affects Pac-Resolver versions before 5.0.0. A Proxy Auto-Configuration ( PAC ) file is a JavaScript function that determines whether web browser requests should be routed directly to the destination or forwarded to a web proxy server for a given hostname. PAC files are how proxy rules are distributed in enterprise environments. "This package is used for PAC file support in  Pac-Proxy-Agent , which is used in turn in  Proxy-Agent , which then used all over the place as the standard go-to package for HTTP proxy auto-detection and configuration in Node.js," Tim Perry  said...

A newly discovered side-channel attack demonstrated on modern processors can be weaponized to successfully overcome  Site Isolation protections  weaved into Google Chrome and Chromium browsers and leak sensitive data in a  Spectre-style   speculative execution  attack. Dubbed " Spook.js " by academics from the University of Michigan, University of Adelaide, Georgia Institute of Technology, and Tel Aviv University, the technique is a  JavaScript-based line of attack  that specifically aims to get around barriers Google put in place to potentially prevent leakage by ensuring that content from different domains is not shared in the same address space after Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities came to light in January 2018. "An attacker-controlled webpage can know which other pages from the same websites a user is currently browsing, retrieve sensitive information from these pages, and even recover login credentials (e.g., username and password) when t...

Russian internet giant Yandex has been the target of a record-breaking distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack by a new botnet called Mēris. The botnet is believed to have pummeled the company's web infrastructure with millions of HTTP requests, before hitting a peak of 21.8 million requests per second (RPS), dwarfing a recent botnet-powered attack that came to light last month,  bombarding  an unnamed Cloudflare customer in the financial industry with 17.2 million RPS. Russian DDoS mitigation service Qrator Labs, which disclosed details of the attack on Thursday, called  Mēris  — meaning "Plague" in the Latvian language — a "botnet of a new kind."  "It is also clear that this particular botnet is still growing. There is a suggestion that the botnet could grow in force through password brute-forcing, although we tend to neglect that as a slight possibility. That looks like some vulnerability that was either kept secret before the massive campaign...

WhatsApp on Friday  announced  it will roll out support for end-to-end encrypted chat backups on the cloud for Android and iOS users, paving the way for storing information such as chat messages and photos in Apple iCloud or Google Drive in a cryptographically secure manner. The optional feature, which will go live to all of its two billion users in the coming weeks, is expected to only work on the primary devices tied to their accounts, and not companion devices such as desktops or laptops that simply mirror the content of WhatsApp on the phones. The development marks an escalation in the growing tussle over encryption technology and meeting law enforcement needs, wherein privacy-preserving technologies have created impenetrable barriers to comply with legal demands to access vast swathes of digital information stored on smartphones and the cloud — a phenomenon referred to as the "going dark" problem. While the Facebook-owned messaging platform flipped the switch on end-...

The Linux community was caught unprepared when, in December 2020, as part of a change in the way Red Hat supports and develops CentOS, Red Hat suddenly announced that it's cutting the official CentOS 8 support window from ten years – to just two, with support ending Dec 31, 2021. It created a peculiar situation where CentOS 7 users that did the right thing and upgraded quickly to CentOS 8 were left using an OS with just a year's official support remaining – while users of CentOS 7 still get full support until June 30, 2024. Worse, the fact that stable releases of CentOS were discontinued in exchange for the rolling-release CentOS Stream means that to secure their workloads most CentOS 8 users have to opt for an entirely different Linux distribution, with just a year to choose, evaluate and implement an alternative. Red Hat's unexpected decision underlined to what degree software users depend on official support windows for their software security. Countless organization...