Search results for software exploits | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

The heightened regulatory and legal pressure on software-producing organizations to secure their supply chains and ensure the integrity of their software should come as no surprise. In the last several years, the software supply chain has become an increasingly attractive target for attackers who see opportunities to force-multiply their attacks by orders of magnitude. For example, look no further than 2021's Log4j breach, where Log4j (an open-source logging framework maintained by Apache and used in a myriad of different applications) was the root of exploits that put thousands of systems at risk.  Log4j’s communication functionality was vulnerable and thus provided an opening for an attacker to inject malicious code into the logs which could then be executed on the system. After its discovery, security researchers saw millions of attempted exploits, many of which turned into successful denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. According to some of the latest research by Gartner, close t...

Last week, a group calling itself " The Shadow Brokers " published what it said was a set of NSA "cyber weapons," including some working exploits for the Internet's most crucial network infrastructure, apparently stolen from the agency's Equation Group in 2013. Well, talking about the authenticity of those exploits, The Intercept published Friday a new set of documents from the Edward Snowden archive, which confirms that the files leaked by the Shadow Brokers contain authentic NSA software and hacking tools used to secretly infect computers worldwide. As I previously mentioned , the leaked documents revealed how the NSA was systematically spying on customers of big technology companies like Cisco, Fortinet, and Juniper for at least a decade. Hacking tools from The Shadow Brokers leak named ExtraBacon, EpicBanana, and JetPlow, contain exploits that can compromise Cisco firewall products including devices from the Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) li...

NSS Labs issued the report titled " The Known Unknowns " to explain the dynamics behind the market of zero-day exploits. Last week I discussed about the necessity to define a model for " cyber conflict " to qualify the principal issues related to the use of cyber tools and cyber weapons in an Information Warfare context, today I decided to give more info to the readers on cyber arsenals of governments. Governments consider the use of cyber weapons as a coadiuvant to conventional weapons, these malicious application could be used for sabotage or for cyber espionage, they could be used to hit a specifically designed software (e.g. SCADA within a critical infrastructure ) or they could be used for large scale operations infecting thousand of machines exploiting zero-day in common application ( e.g. Java platform, Adobe software ). The zero-day flaw are the most important component for the design of an efficient cyber weapon, governments have recently created dedic...

Phishing attacks remain a huge challenge for organizations in 2025. In fact, with attackers increasingly leveraging identity-based techniques over software exploits, phishing arguably poses a bigger threat than ever before.  Attackers are increasingly leveraging identity-based techniques over software exploits, with phishing and stolen credentials (a byproduct of phishing) now the primary cause of breaches. Source: Verizon DBIR Attackers are increasingly leveraging identity-based techniques over software exploits, with phishing and stolen credentials (a byproduct of phishing) now the primary cause of breaches. Source: Verizon DBIR Attackers are turning to identity attacks like phishing because they can achieve all of the same objectives as they would in a traditional endpoint or network attack, simply by logging into a victim’s account. And with organizations now using hundreds of internet apps across their workforce, the scope of accounts that can be phished or targeted with s...

Software that facilitates the attack by beginners online scammers and the future is big business anarchists, says Karlin Lillington The suites are equipped with new software with all the trappings of modern software now offers: cloud computing hosting, software as a service (SaaS) functions, outsourcing, digital certificates, licenses to prevent piracy, software modules, and provided services and support packages. But the difference between these programs - listed in the Internet Relay Chat rooms, instant chat (IRC) and private online forums - and what it could buy public providers is that they offer more software piracy increasingly sophisticated for simple - young hackers with little ability to write their own computer code. "Lessons learned from large companies legitimate software - such as development practices, techniques and anti-piracy, support and prices - are regularly repeated in the informal economy, in order to increase efficiency and profits, says the safety re...

Well, there's some good news for hackers and vulnerability hunters, though terrible news for tech manufacturers! Exploit vendor Zerodium is now willing to offer significantly higher payouts for full, working zero-day exploits that allow stealing of data from WhatsApp, iMessage and other online chat applications. Zerodium—a startup by the infamous French-based company Vupen that buys and sells zero-day exploits to government agencies around the world—said it would now pay up to $2 million for remote iOS jailbreaks and $1 million for exploits that target secure messaging apps. Get $2 Million for Remotely Jailbreaking An iPhone Previously, Zerodium was offering $1.5 million for persistent iOS jailbreaks that can be executed remotely without any user interaction (zero-click)—but now the company has increased that amount to $2 million. The company is now offering $1.5 million for a remote iOS jailbreak that requires minimal user interaction (i.e., single-click)—the amount h...

If you have installed world's most popular torrent download software, μTorrent, then you should download its latest version for Windows as soon as possible. Google's security researcher at Project Zero discovered a serious remote code execution vulnerability in both the 'μTorrent desktop app for Windows' and newly launched 'μTorrent Web' that allows users to download and stream torrents directly into their web browser. μTorrent Classic and μTorrent Web apps run in the background on the Windows machine and start a locally hosted HTTP RPC server on ports 10000 and 19575, respectively, using which users can access its interfaces over any web browser. However, Project Zero researcher Tavis Ormandy found that several issues with these RPC servers could allow remote attackers to take control of the torrent download software with little user interaction. According to Ormandy, uTorrent apps are vulnerable to a hacking technique called the "domain name s...

Section four of the " Executive Order on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity " introduced a lot of people in tech to the concept of a “Software Supply Chain” and securing it. If you make software and ever hope to sell it to one or more federal agencies, you  have  to pay attention to this. Even if you never plan to sell to a government, understanding your Software Supply Chain and learning how to secure it will pay dividends in a stronger security footing and the benefits it provides. This article will look at three ways to supercharge your  Software Supply Chain Security . What is your Software Supply Chain? It’s essentially everything that goes into building a piece of software: from the IDE in which the developer writes code, to the third-party dependencies, to the build systems and scripts, to the hardware and operating system on which it runs. Instabilities and vulnerabilities can be introduced, maliciously or not, from inception to deployment and even beyond....

WikiLeaks has published a new batch of the ongoing Vault 7 leak , this time detailing a framework – which is being used by the CIA for monitoring the Internet activity of the targeted systems by exploiting vulnerabilities in Wi-Fi devices. Dubbed " Cherry Blossom ," the framework was allegedly designed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) with the help of Stanford Research Institute (SRI International), an American nonprofit research institute, as part of its ‘Cherry Bomb’ project. Cherry Blossom is basically a remotely controllable firmware-based implant for wireless networking devices, including routers and wireless access points (APs), which exploits router vulnerabilities to gain unauthorized access and then replace firmware with custom Cherry Blossom firmware. "An implanted device [ called Flytrap ] can then be used to monitor the internet activity of and deliver software exploits to targets of interest." a leaked CIA manual  reads . "The wi...

Hackers have sold secrets of zero-day exploits in the underground Dark Web marketplace such as the Silk Road and its various successors for years, and now a new deep web marketplace has appeared that offers anonymity protection to its sellers. A new Dark Web market , called " TheRealDeal ," has opened up for hackers, which focuses on selling Zero-Day exploits — infiltration codes that took advantage of software vulnerabilities for which the manufacturers have released no official software patch. Yes, THE REAL DEE……..EAL TheRealDeal Market, actually emerged over the last month, makes use of Tor anonymity software and the digital currency Bitcoin in an attempt to hide the identities of its buyers, sellers, and of course its own administrators. TOR , a.k.a The Onion Router , is one of the most well-known Darknets, where it is harder to trace the identity of a user, as it doesn't share your identifying information such as your IP address and physical loc...

The growing popularity of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is generating curiosity—and concern—among security specialists. Crypto mining software has been found on user machines, often installed by botnets. Organizations need to understand the risks posed by this software and what actions, if any, should be taken. To better advise our readers, we reached out to the security researchers at Cato Networks. Cato provides a cloud-based SD-WAN that includes FireWall as a Service (FWaaS) . Its research team, Cato Research Labs, maintains the company's Cloud IPS, and today released a list of crypto mining pool addresses that you can use as a blacklist in your firewall. (To download the list, visit this page .) Cato Research Labs determined crypto mining represents a moderate threat to the organization. Immediate disruption of the organization infrastructure or loss of sensitive data is not likely to be a direct outcome of crypto mining. However, there are significant risks of i...