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Microsoft on Tuesday kicked off its first set of updates for 2022 by  plugging 96 security holes  across its software ecosystem, while urging customers to prioritize patching for what it calls a critical "wormable" vulnerability. Of the 96 vulnerabilities, nine are rated Critical and 89 are rated Important in severity, with six zero-day publicly known at the time of the release. This is in addition to  29 issues  patched in Microsoft Edge on January 6, 2022. None of the disclosed bugs are listed as under attack. The patches cover a swath of the computing giant's portfolio, including Microsoft Windows and Windows Components, Exchange Server, Microsoft Office and Office Components, SharePoint Server, .NET Framework, Microsoft Dynamics, Open-Source Software, Windows Hyper-V, Windows Defender, and Windows Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP). Chief among them is  CVE-2022-21907  (CVSS score: 9.8), a remote code execution vulnerability rooted in the HTTP Protocol S...

With the last month of 2021 dominated by the log4J vulnerabilities discovery, publication, and patches popping up in rapid succession, odds are you have patched your system against Log4J exploitation attempts. At least some systems, if not all. You might even have installed the latest patch – at the time of writing, that is 2.17.1, but, if the last rapid patching cycle persists, it might have changed by the time this is published. In the meantime, defenders might have been working overtime to plug Log4J born security gaps, but so did cyber-attackers. Log4J's well-deserved fame also alerted cyber-attackers to a potential entry pathway into their target. And, while log4J will hopefully vanish from the headlines,  cyber-attackers are likely to continue trying to exploit it  in the hope of finding unpatched or incompletely patched targets. As human error still accounts  for 95% of all security breaches , cyber-attackers actively rely on these human errors to exploit them a...

Cybersecurity researchers have detailed a high severity flaw in KCodes NetUSB component that's integrated into millions of end-user router devices from Netgear, TP-Link, Tenda, EDiMAX, D-Link, and Western Digital, among others. KCodes  NetUSB  is a Linux kernel module that enables devices on a local network to provide USB-based services over IP. Printers, external hard drives, and flash drives plugged into a Linux-based embedded system (e.g., a router) are made available via the network using the driver. CVE-2021-45608  (CVSS score: 9.8), as the security flaw is tracked as, relates to a  buffer overflow vulnerability  that, if successfully exploited, can allow attackers to execute code remotely in the kernel and perform malicious activities of their choice, according to a  report  shared by SentinelOne with The Hacker News. This is the latest in a string of NetUSB vulnerabilities that has been patched in recent years. In May 2015, researchers from...

Moxie Marlinspike, the founder of the popular encrypted instant messaging service Signal, has announced that he is stepping down as the chief executive of the non-profit in a move that has been underway over the last few months. "In other words, after a decade or more, it's difficult to overstate how important Signal is to me, but I now feel very comfortable replacing myself as CEO based on the team we have, and also believe that it is an important step for expanding on Signal's success," Marlinspike  said  in a blog post on Monday. Executive chairman and WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton, who famously urged users to #DeleteFacebook in March 2018 and founded the Signal Foundation along with Marlinspike after he walked away from the social media giant in 2017 over a conflict with Facebook's plans to monetize WhatsApp, will serve as the interim CEO while the search for a replacement is on. Founded in July 2014, Signal has more than 40 million monthly users, in ...

Lookout , an endpoint-to-cloud cyber security company, have put together their cyber security predictions for 2022.  1  —  Cloud connectivity and cloud-to-cloud connectivity will amplify supply-chain breaches One area organizations need to continue to monitor in 2022 is the software supply chain. We tend to think of cloud apps as disparate islands used as destinations by endpoints and end-users to collect and process data. The reality is that these apps constantly communicate with different entities and systems like software-update infrastructure and with each other — interactions that are often not monitored. In late 2020, the cybersecurity community uncovered one of the worst breaches in recent memory when the  SolarWinds  software-publishing infrastructure was infiltrated. More than 100 organizations, including nine U.S. federal agencies, were compromised by trojanized updates that opened backdoors to their infrastructure. This is a prime example of how a...

Microsoft on Monday disclosed details of a recently patched security vulnerability in Apple's macOS operating system that could be weaponized by a threat actor to expose users' personal information. Tracked as CVE-2021-30970, the flaw concerns a logic issue in the Transparency, Consent and Control (TCC) security framework, which enables users to configure the privacy settings of their apps and provide access to protected files and app data. The  Security & Privacy pane  in the macOS System Preferences app serves as the front end of TCC. Microsoft 365 Defender Research Team, which reported the vulnerability to Apple on July 15, 2021, dubbed the flaw " powerdir ." Apple  addressed  the issue as part of macOS 11.6 and 12.1 updates released in December 2021 with improved state management. While Apple does enforce a policy that limits access to TCC to only apps with full disk access, it's possible to orchestrate an attack wherein a malicious application could ...

The European Union's data protection watchdog on Monday ordered Europol to delete a vast trove of personal data it obtained pertaining to individuals with no proven links to criminal activity. "Datasets older than six months that have not undergone this Data Subject Categorisation must be erased," the European Data Protection Supervisor ( EDPS )  said  in a press statement. "This means that Europol will no longer be permitted to retain data about people who have not been linked to a crime or a criminal activity for long periods with no set deadline." EDPS' investigation into Europol's handling of sensitive data commenced in April 2019, with the authority noting that the storage of large volumes of data with no Data Subject Categorisation poses a risk to individuals' fundamental rights and amounts to mass surveillance. The cache is said to contain at least four petabytes,  according  to The Guardian. In addition, the ruling also imposed a six-mon...