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Multiple security vulnerabilities have been discovered in various services, including Honeywell Experion distributed control system (DCS) and QuickBlox, that, if successfully exploited, could result in severe compromise of affected systems. Dubbed Crit.IX, the nine flaws in the Honeywell Experion DCS platform allow for "unauthorized remote code execution, which means an attacker would have the power to take over the devices and alter the operation of the DCS controller, whilst also hiding the alterations from the engineering workstation that manages the controller," Armis said in a statement shared with The Hacker News. Put differently, the issues relate to lack of encryption and adequate authentication mechanisms in a proprietary protocol called Control Data Access (CDA) that's used to communicate between Experion Servers and C300 controllers, effectively enabling a threat actor to take over the devices and alter the operation of the DCS controller. "As a resul...

As security practices continue to evolve, one primary concern persists in the minds of security professionals—the risk of employees unintentionally or deliberately exposing vital information. Insider threats, whether originating from deliberate actions or accidental incidents, pose a significant challenge to safeguarding sensitive data. To effectively address insider risks, organizations must adopt a holistic approach that encompasses technical, procedural, and human elements. While access controls, encryption, and monitoring systems are crucial for identifying and mitigating unauthorized access and suspicious activities, the increasing prevalence of cloud-based environments and the surge in SaaS application usage demand a fresh perspective on Insider Risk Management from a SaaS security standpoint. Stay ahead of the game by embracing the SaaS security lens. Join us for an enlightening webinar where we will demonstrate how security practitioners can proactively adapt their approach...

All-In-One Security (AIOS), a WordPress plugin installed on over one million sites, has issued a security update after a bug introduced in version 5.1.9 of the software caused users' passwords being added to the database in plaintext format. "A malicious site administrator (i.e. a user already logged into the site as an admin) could then have read them," UpdraftPlus, the maintainers of AIOS,  said . "This would be a problem if those site administrators were to try out those passwords on other services where your users might have used the same password. If those other services' logins are not protected by two-factor authentication, this could be a risk to the affected website." The issue surfaced nearly three weeks ago when a user of the plugin  reported  the behavior, stating they were "absolutely shocked that a security plugin is making such a basic security 101 error." AIOS also noted that the updates remove the existing logged data from th...

A malicious actor has been linked to a cloud credential stealing campaign in June 2023 that's focused on Azure and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) services, marking the adversary's expansion in targeting beyond Amazon Web Services (AWS). The findings come from  SentinelOne  and  Permiso , which said the "campaigns share similarity with tools attributed to the notorious TeamTNT cryptojacking crew," although it emphasized that "attribution remains challenging with script-based tools." They also overlap with an ongoing TeamTNT campaign  disclosed  by Aqua called Silentbob that leverages misconfigured cloud services to drop malware as part of what's said to be a testing effort, while also linking  SCARLETEEL  attacks to the threat actor, citing infrastructure commonalities. "TeamTNT is scanning for credentials across multiple cloud environments, including AWS, Azure, and GCP," Aqua noted. The attacks, which single out public-facing Docker instanc...

A new malware strain has been found covertly targeting small office/home office (SOHO) routers for more than two years, infiltrating over 70,000 devices and creating a botnet with 40,000 nodes spanning 20 countries. Lumen Black Lotus Labs has dubbed the malware  AVrecon , making it the third such strain to focus on SOHO routers after  ZuoRAT  and  HiatusRAT  over the past year. "This makes AVrecon one of the largest SOHO router-targeting botnets ever seen," the company  said . "The purpose of the campaign appears to be the creation of a covert network to quietly enable a range of criminal activities from password spraying to digital advertising fraud." A majority of the infections are located in the U.K. and the U.S., followed by Argentina, Nigeria, Brazil, Italy, Bangladesh, Vietnam, India, Russia, and South Africa, among others. AVrecon was  first highlighted  by Kaspersky senior security researcher Ye (Seth) Jin in May 2021, indicating th...

Zimbra has warned of a critical zero-day security flaw in its email software that has come under active exploitation in the wild. "A security vulnerability in Zimbra Collaboration Suite Version 8.8.15 that could potentially impact the confidentiality and integrity of your data has surfaced," the company  said  in an advisory. It also said that the issue has been addressed and that it's expected to be delivered in the July patch release. Additional specifics about the flaw are currently unavailable, although Zimbra said it fixed the issue through input sanitization. In the interim, it is urging customers to  apply a manual fix  to eliminate the attack vector - Take a backup of the file /opt/zimbra/jetty/webapps/zimbra/m/momoveto Edit this file and go to line number 40 Update the parameter value as: <input name="st" type="hidden" value="${fn:escapeXml(param.st)}"/> Before the update, the line appeared as: <input name="st...

Government entities, military organizations, and civilian users in Ukraine and Poland have been targeted as part of a series of campaigns designed to steal sensitive data and gain persistent remote access to the infected systems. The intrusion set, which stretches from April 2022 to July 2023, leverages phishing lures and decoy documents to deploy a downloader malware called PicassoLoader, which acts as a conduit to launch Cobalt Strike Beacon and njRAT. "The attacks used a multistage infection chain initiated with malicious Microsoft Office documents, most commonly using Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint file formats," Cisco Talos researcher Vanja Svajcer  said  in a new report. "This was followed by an executable downloader and payload concealed in an image file, likely to make its detection more difficult." Some  of the  activities  have been attributed to a threat actor called GhostWriter (aka UAC-0057 or UNC1151), whose priorities are said to align with th...