The Hacker News | #1 Trusted Source for Cybersecurity News — Index Page

Cybersecurity researchers have detailed a new campaign that likely targets entities in Southeast Asia with a previously unrecognized Linux malware that's engineered to enable remote access to its operators, in addition to amassing credentials and function as a proxy server. The malware family, dubbed " FontOnLake " by Slovak cybersecurity firm ESET, is said to feature "well-designed modules" that are continuously being upgraded with a broad range of abilities, indicating an active development phase. Samples uploaded to VirusTotal point to the possibility that the very first intrusions utilizing this threat have been happening as early as May 2020. Avast  and  Lacework Labs  are tracking the same malware under the moniker HCRootkit. "The sneaky nature of FontOnLake's tools in combination with advanced design and low prevalence suggest that they are used in targeted attacks," ESET researcher Vladislav Hrčka  said . "To collect data or condu...

The Apache Software Foundation on Thursday released additional security updates for its HTTP Server product to remediate what it says is an "incomplete fix" for an  actively exploited  path traversal and remote code execution flaw that it patched earlier this week. CVE-2021-42013 , as the new vulnerability is identified as, builds upon  CVE-2021-41773 , a flaw that impacts Apache web servers running version 2.4.49 and involves a  path normalization  bug that could enable an adversary to access and view arbitrary files stored on a vulnerable server. Although the flaw was addressed by the maintainers in version 2.4.50, a day after the patches were released it became known that the weakness could also be abused to gain remote code execution if the "mod_cgi" module was loaded and the configuration "require all denied" was absent, prompting Apache to issue another round of emergency updates. "It was found that the fix for CVE-2021-41773 in Apache HTT...

A high-severity code injection vulnerability has been disclosed in 23andMe's Yamale, a schema and validator for YAML, that could be trivially exploited by adversaries to execute arbitrary Python code. The flaw, tracked as  CVE-2021-38305  (CVSS score: 7.8), involves manipulating the schema file provided as input to the tool to circumvent protections and achieve code execution. Particularly, the  issue  resides in the schema parsing function, which allows any input passed to be evaluated and executed, resulting in a scenario where a specially-crafted string within the schema can be abused for the injection of system commands. Yamale is a Python package that allows developers to validate YAML — a data serialization language often used for writing configuration files — from the command line. The package is used by at least  224 repositories  on GitHub.  "This gap allows attackers that can provide an input schema file to perform Python code injection ...

So, you've been thinking about getting a Penetration Test done on your Amazon Web Services (AWS) environment. Great! What should that involve exactly?  There are many options available, and knowing what you need will help you make your often limited security budget go as far as possible. Broadly, the key focus areas for most penetration tests involving AWS: Your externally accessible cloud infrastructure Any application(s) you're building or hosting Your internal cloud infrastructure Your AWS configuration itself Secrets management  We'll look at each one, starting with the most important: External Infrastructure The good news here is that, by default, AWS does its best to help you stay secure. For example, the default security groups don't let your EC2 instances receive communication from the outside world unless you actively specify it by adding additional rules. That said, AWS still allows you plenty of rope to hang yourself with if you're not carefu...

The U.S. government on Wednesday announced the formation of a new Civil Cyber-Fraud Initiative that aims to hold contractors accountable for failing to meet required cybersecurity requirements in order to safeguard public sector information and infrastructure. "For too long, companies have chosen silence under the mistaken belief that it is less risky to hide a breach than to bring it forward and to report it,"  said  Deputy Attorney General Monaco in a press statement. "Well that changes today, [and] we will use our civil enforcement tools to pursue companies, those who are government contractors who receive federal funds, when they fail to follow required cybersecurity standards — because we know that puts all of us at risk." The Civil Cyber-Fraud Initiative is part of the U.S. Justice Department's (DoJ) efforts to build resilience against cybersecurity intrusions and holding companies to task for deliberately providing deficient cybersecurity products or ...

All third-party iOS, iPadOS, and macOS apps that allow users to create an account should also provide a method for terminating their accounts from within the apps beginning next year, Apple said on Wednesday. "This requirement applies to all app submissions starting January 31, 2022," the iPhone maker  said , urging developers to "review any laws that may require you to maintain certain types of data, and to make sure your app clearly explains what data your app collects, how it collects that data, all uses of that data, your data retention/deletion policies." While the feature could be convenient, it's worth noting that Apple only says the mechanism should have a provision for users to "initiate deletion of their account from within the app," meaning it's possible that apps could redirect users to a website or prompt them to send an email in order actually to purge their information. The reminder follows updates to  App Store Review Guideline...

Interactive livestreaming platform Twitch  acknowledged  a "breach" after an anonymous poster on the 4chan messaging board leaked its source code, an unreleased Steam competitor from Amazon Game Studios, details of creator payouts , proprietary software development kits, and other internal tools. The Amazon-owned service said it's "working with urgency to understand the extent of this," adding the data was exposed "due to an error in a Twitch server configuration change that was subsequently accessed by a malicious third party." "At this time, we have no indication that login credentials have been exposed," Twitch  noted  in a post published late Wednesday. "Additionally, full credit card numbers are not stored by Twitch, so full credit card numbers were not exposed." The forum user claimed the hack is designed to "foster more disruption and competition in the online video streaming space" because "their communi...