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A now-patched critical remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability in GitLab's web interface has been detected as actively exploited in the wild, cybersecurity researchers warn, rendering a large number of internet-facing GitLab instances susceptible to attacks. Tracked as  CVE-2021-22205 , the issue relates to an improper validation of user-provided images that results in arbitrary code execution. The vulnerability, which affects all versions starting from 11.9, has since been  addressed  by GitLab on April 14, 2021 in versions 13.8.8, 13.9.6, and 13.10.3. In one of the real-world attacks  detailed  by HN Security last month, two user accounts with admin privileges were registered on a publicly-accessible GitLab server belonging to an unnamed customer by exploiting the aforementioned flaw to upload a malicious payload "image," leading to remote execution of commands that granted the rogue accounts elevated permissions. Attacks exploiting the vulnerability ar...

Google on Monday announced that it will pay security researchers to find exploits using vulnerabilities, previously remediated or otherwise, over the next three months as part of a new bug bounty program to improve the security of the Linux kernel. To that end, the company is expected to issue rewards worth $31,337 (a reference to Leet ) for exploiting privilege escalation in a lab environment for each patched vulnerability, an amount that can climb up to $50,337 for working exploits that take advantage of zero-day flaws in the kernel and other undocumented attack techniques. Specifically, the program aims to uncover attacks that could be launched against Kubernetes-based infrastructure to defeat process isolation barriers (via NSJail) and break out of the sandbox to leak secret information. The program is expected to last until January 31, 2022. "It is important to note, that the easiest exploitation primitives are not available in our lab environment due to the hardening ...

Multiple vulnerabilities have been disclosed in Hitachi Vantara's Pentaho Business Analytics software that could be abused by malicious actors to upload arbitrary data files and even execute arbitrary code on the underlying host system of the application. The security weaknesses were  reported  by researchers Alberto Favero from German cybersecurity firm Hawsec and Altion Malka from Census Labs earlier this year, prompting the company to  issue  necessary patches to address the issues. Pentaho is a Java-based business intelligence platform that offers data integration, analytics, online analytical processing (OLAP), and mining capabilities, and  counts  major  companies and organizations  like Bell, CERN, Cipal, Logitech, Nasdaq, Telefonica, Teradata, and the National September 11 Memorial and Museum among its customers. The list of flaws, which affect Pentaho Business Analytics versions 9.1 and lower, is as follows - CVE-2021-31599 ...

There is often confusion between Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) and SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) solutions, as both are designed to address security issues within SaaS applications. CASBs protect sensitive data by implementing multiple security policy enforcements to safeguard critical data. For identifying and classifying sensitive information, like Personally Identifiable Information (PII), Intellectual Property (IP), and business records, CASBs definitely help.  However, as the number of SaaS apps increase, the amount of misconfigurations and possible exposure widens and cannot be mitigated by CASBs. These solutions act as a link between users and cloud service providers and can identify issues across various cloud environments. Where CASBs fall short is that they identify breaches  after  they happen. When it comes to getting full visibility and control over the organization's SaaS apps, an SSPM solution would be the better choice, as the security ...

A novel class of vulnerabilities could be leveraged by threat actors to inject visually deceptive malware in a way that's semantically permissible but alters the logic defined by the source code, effectively opening the door to more first-party and supply chain risks. Dubbed " Trojan Source attacks ," the technique "exploits subtleties in text-encoding standards such as  Unicode  to produce source code whose tokens are logically encoded in a different order from the one in which they are displayed, leading to vulnerabilities that cannot be perceived directly by human code reviewers," Cambridge University researchers Nicholas Boucher and Ross Anderson said in a newly published paper. The  vulnerabilities  — tracked as CVE-2021-42574 and CVE-2021-42694 — affect compilers of all popular programming languages such as C, C++, C#, JavaScript, Java, Rust, Go, and Python. Compilers are programs that translate high-level human-readable source code into their lower-l...

Cybersecurity researchers disclosed details of what they say is the "largest botnet" observed in the wild in the last six years, infecting over 1.6 million devices primarily located in China, with the goal of launching distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks and inserting advertisements into HTTP websites visited by unsuspecting users. Qihoo 360's Netlab security team dubbed the botnet " Pink " based on a sample obtained on November 21, 2019, owing to a large number of function names starting with "pink." Mainly targeting MIPS-based fiber routers, the botnet leverages a combination of third-party services such as GitHub, peer-to-peer (P2P) networks, and central command-and-control (C2) servers for its bots to controller communications, not to mention completely encrypting the transmission channels to prevent the victimized devices from being taken over. "Pink raced with the vendor to retain control over the infected devices, while vendor...

12 people have been detained as part of an international law enforcement operation for orchestrating ransomware attacks on critical infrastructure and large organizations that hit over 1,800 victims across 71 countries since 2019, marking the latest action against cybercrime groups. The arrests were made earlier this week on October 26 in Ukraine and Switzerland, resulting in the seizure of cash worth $52,000, five luxury vehicles, and a number of electronic devices that the agencies said are being examined to uncover new forensic evidence of their malicious activities and pursue new investigative leads. The suspects have been primarily linked to LockerGoga, MegaCortex, and Dharma ransomware, in addition to being in charge of  laundering the ransom payments  by funneling the ill-gotten Bitcoin proceeds through mixing services and cashing them out. "The targeted suspects all had different roles in these professional, highly organised criminal organisations," Europol  ...