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Researchers have demonstrated yet another variant of the SAD DNS cache poisoning attack that leaves about 38% of the domain name resolvers vulnerable, enabling attackers to redirect traffic originally destined to legitimate websites to a server under their control. "The  attack  allows an off-path attacker to inject a malicious DNS record into a DNS cache," University of California researchers Keyu Man, Xin'an Zhou, and Zhiyun Qian  said . "SAD DNS attack allows an attacker to redirect any traffic (originally destined to a specific domain) to his own server and then become a man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacker, allowing eavesdropping and tampering of the communication." The latest flaw affects Linux kernels as well as popular DNS software, including BIND, Unbound, and dnsmasq running on top of Linux, but not when run on other operating systems FreeBSD or Windows. From Kaminsky Attack to SAD DNS DNS cache poisoning, also called DNS spoofing, is a  technique  i...

Networking equipment company Netgear has  released  yet  another round  of  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. Tracked as  CVE-2021-34991  (CVSS score: 8.8), the pre-authentication buffer overflow flaw in small office and home office (SOHO) routers can lead to code execution with the highest privileges by taking advantage of an issue residing in the Universal Plug and Play ( UPnP ) feature that allows devices to discover each other's presence on the same local network and open ports needed to connect to the public Internet. Because of its ubiquitous nature, UPnP is used by a wide variety of devices, including personal computers, networking equipment, video game consoles and internet of things (IoT) devices. Specifically, the vulnerability stems from the fact that the UPnP daemon accepts unauthent...

Organizations have been worrying about cyber security since the advent of the technological age. Today, digital transformation coupled with the rise of remote work has made the need for security awareness all the more critical. Cyber security professionals are continuously thinking about how to prevent cyber security breaches from happening, with employees and contractors often proving to be the most significant risk factor for causing cyber security incidents. Proactive cyber security professionals will find that an effective security awareness training program can significantly reduce their risk of getting exposed to a cyber incident. For a security awareness training program to be successful, it must be measurable and yield positive, actionable results over time.  The following looks at what good security awareness looks like and how vital  phishing simulations and awareness training  is in devising effective  cyber security programs.  The essentials of ...

SaaS Adoption is Skyrocketing, Resilience Hasn't Kept Pace SaaS platforms have revolutionized how businesses operate. They simplify collaboration, accelerate deployment, and reduce the overhead of managing infrastructure. But with their rise comes a subtle, dangerous assumption: that the convenience of SaaS extends to resilience. It doesn't. These platforms weren't built with full-scale data protection in mind . Most follow a shared responsibility model — wherein the provider ensures uptime and application security, but the data inside is your responsibility. In a world of hybrid architectures, global teams, and relentless cyber threats, that responsibility is harder than ever to manage. Modern organizations are being stretched across: Hybrid and multi-cloud environments with decentralized data sprawl Complex integration layers between IaaS, SaaS, and legacy systems Expanding regulatory pressure with steeper penalties for noncompliance Escalating ransomware threats and inside...

Nation-state operators with nexus to Iran are increasingly turning to ransomware as a means of generating revenue and intentionally sabotaging their targets, while also engaging in patient and persistent social engineering campaigns and aggressive brute force attacks. No less than six threat actors affiliated with the West Asian country have been discovered deploying ransomware to achieve their strategic objectives, researchers from Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC)  revealed , adding "these ransomware deployments were launched in waves every six to eight weeks on average." Of note is a threat actor tracked as  Phosphorus  (aka Charming Kitten or APT35), which has been found scanning IP addresses on the internet for unpatched Fortinet FortiOS SSL VPN and on-premises Exchange Servers to gain initial access and persistence on vulnerable networks, before moving to deploy additional payloads that enable the actors to pivot to other machines and deploy ransomwar...

Cybersecurity agencies from Australia, the U.K., and the U.S. on Wednesday  released  a joint advisory warning of active exploitation of Fortinet and Microsoft Exchange ProxyShell vulnerabilities by Iranian state-sponsored actors to gain initial access to vulnerable systems for follow-on activities, including data exfiltration and ransomware. The threat actor is believed to have leveraged multiple Fortinet FortiOS vulnerabilities dating back to March 2021 as well as a remote code execution flaw affecting Microsoft Exchange Servers since at least October 2021, according to the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC), and the U.K.'s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC). The agencies did not attribute the activities to a specific advanced persistent threat (APT) actor. Targeted victims include Australian organizations and a wide range of entities across multiple U.S. cr...

A malicious campaign has been found leveraging a technique called domain fronting to hide command-and-control traffic by leveraging a legitimate domain owned by the Myanmar government to route communications to an attacker-controlled server with the goal of evading detection. The threat, which was observed in September 2021, deployed Cobalt Strike payloads as a stepping stone for launching further attacks, with the adversary using a domain associated with the Myanmar Digital News network, a state-owned digital newspaper, as a front for their Beacons. "When the Beacon is launched, it will submit a DNS request for a legitimate high-reputation domain hosted behind Cloudflare infrastructure and modify the subsequent HTTPs requests header to instruct the CDN to direct the traffic to an attacker-controlled host," Cisco Talos researchers Chetan Raghuprasad, Vanja Svajcer, and Asheer Malhotra  said  in a technical analysis published Tuesday. Originally released in 2012 to addres...

Israeli spyware vendor Candiru, which was  added  to an economic blocklist by the U.S. government this month, is said to have reportedly waged "watering hole" attacks against high-profile entities in the U.K. and the Middle East, new findings reveal. "The victimized websites belong to media outlets in the U.K., Yemen, and Saudi Arabia, as well as to Hezbollah; to government institutions in Iran (Ministry of Foreign Affairs), Syria (including the Ministry of Electricity), and Yemen (including the Ministries of Interior and Finance); to internet service providers in Yemen and Syria; and to aerospace/military technology companies in Italy and South Africa," ESET  said  in a new report. "The attackers also created a website mimicking a medical trade fair in Germany." The strategic web compromises are believed to have occurred in two waves, the first commencing as early as March 2020 before ending in August 2020, and the second string of attacks beginning in...