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In April 2020, Cynet launched the world's first Incident Response Challenge to test and reward the skills of Incident Response professionals. The Challenge consisted of 25 incidents, in increasing difficulty, all inspired by real-life scenarios that required participants to go beyond the textbook solution and think outside of the box. Over 2,500 IR professionals competed to be recognized as the top incident responders. Now that the competition is over (however, the challenge website is still open for anyone who wants to practice solving the challenges), Cynet makes the detailed solutions available as a free resource for knowledge and inspiration. Providing the thought process and detailed steps to solve each of the challenges will serve as a training aid and knowledge base for incident responders. The Fine Art of Forensic Investigation The core of any IR processes is the forensic investigation. It uncovers the critical path from the initial stage of suspicion or l

Citrix yesterday issued new security patches for as many as 11 security flaws that affect its Citrix Application Delivery Controller (ADC), Gateway, and SD-WAN WAN Optimization edition (WANOP) networking products. Successful exploitation of these critical flaws could let unauthenticated attackers perform code injection, information disclosure, and even denial-of-service attacks against the gateway or the authentication virtual servers . Citrix confirmed that the aforementioned issues do not impact other virtual servers, such as load balancing and content switching virtual servers. Among the affected Citrix SD-WAN WANOP appliances include models 4000-WO, 4100-WO, 5000-WO, and 5100-WO. The networking vendor also reiterated that these vulnerabilities were not connected to a previously fixed zero-day NetScaler flaw (tagged as CVE-2019-19781 ) that allowed bad actors to perform arbitrary code execution even without proper authentication. It also said there's no evidence

In today's digital world, where connectivity is rules all, endpoints serve as the gateway to a business's digital kingdom. And because of this, endpoints are one of hackers' favorite targets.  According to the IDC,  70% of successful breaches start at the endpoint . Unprotected endpoints provide vulnerable entry points to launch devastating cyberattacks. With IT teams needing to protect more endpoints—and more kinds of endpoints—than ever before, that perimeter has become more challenging to defend. You need to improve your endpoint security, but where do you start? That's where this guide comes in.  We've curated the top 10 must-know endpoint security tips that every IT and security professional should have in their arsenal. From identifying entry points to implementing EDR solutions, we'll dive into the insights you need to defend your endpoints with confidence.  1. Know Thy Endpoints: Identifying and Understanding Your Entry Points Understanding your network's

Microsoft has announced a new free-to-use initiative aimed at uncovering forensic evidence of sabotage on Linux systems, including rootkits and intrusive malware that may otherwise go undetected. The cloud offering, dubbed Project Freta , is a snapshot-based memory forensic mechanism that aims to provide automated full-system volatile memory inspection of virtual machine (VM) snapshots, with capabilities to spot malicious software, kernel rootkits , and other stealthy malware techniques such as process hiding . The project is named after Warsaw's Freta Street , the birthplace of Marie Curie, the famous French-Polish physicist who brought X-ray medical imaging to the battlefield during World War I. "Modern malware is complex, sophisticated, and designed with non-discoverability as a core tenet," said Mike Walker, Microsoft's senior director of New Security Ventures. "Project Freta intends to automate and democratize VM forensics to a point where every us

Lately, we can't help noticing an endless cycle where the more enterprises invest in threat prevention; the more hackers adapt and continue to penetrate enterprises. To make things worse, detecting these penetrations still takes too long with an average dwell time that exceeds 100 (!) days. To keep the enterprise protected, IT needs to figure out a way to break this endless cycle without purchasing complex security and data analysis tools and hiring the right (skilled and expensive) security professionals to operate them. Enter MDR An advanced security service, Managed Detection and Response (MDR), provides ongoing threat detection and response, leveraging AI and machine learning to investigate, alert, and contain threats. MDR is becoming popular and gaining traction. In fact, Gartner forecasts that by 2024, 25% of organizations will be using MDR services, up from less than 5% today. And by 2024, 40% of midsize enterprises will use MDR as their only managed security s

Cybersecurity researchers today issued a security advisory warning enterprises and governments across the globe to immediately patch a highly-critical remote code execution vulnerability affecting F5's BIG-IP networking devices running application security servers. The vulnerability, assigned CVE-2020-5902 and rated as critical with a CVSS score of 10 out of 10, could let remote attackers take complete control of the targeted systems, eventually gaining surveillance over the application data they manage. According to Mikhail Klyuchnikov, a security researcher at Positive Technologies who discovered the flaw and reported it to F5 Networks, the issue resides in a configuration utility called Traffic Management User Interface (TMUI) for BIG-IP application delivery controller (ADC). BIG-IP ADC is being used by large enterprises, data centers, and cloud computing environments, allowing them to implement application acceleration, load balancing, rate shaping, SSL offloading, an

In a joint operation, European and British law enforcement agencies recently arrested hundreds of alleged drug dealers and other criminals after infiltrating into a global network of an encrypted chatting app that was used to plot drug deals, money laundering, extortions, and even murders. Dubbed EncroChat , the top-secret encrypted communication app comes pre-installed on a customized Android-based handset with GPS, camera, and microphone functionality removed for anonymity and security. EncroChat phones aim to securely exchange data and messages with pre-loaded apps for secure instant messaging, VOIP calling, self destruct messages, and includes a 'kill code' functionality to let users remotely wipe complete data in times of trouble. The handset and its services, which cost around £1,500 for a six-month subscription, had 60,000 users worldwide and approximately 10,000 users in the United Kingdom. "EncroChat phones were presented to customers as guaranteeing pe

A new research has uncovered multiple critical reverse RDP vulnerabilities in Apache Guacamole , a popular remote desktop application used by system administrators to access and manage Windows and Linux machines remotely. The reported flaws could potentially let bad actors achieve full control over the Guacamole server, intercept, and control all other connected sessions. According to a report published by Check Point Research and shared with The Hacker News, the flaws grant "an attacker, who has already successfully compromised a computer inside the organization, to launch an attack on the Guacamole gateway when an unsuspecting worker tries to connect to an infected machine." After the cybersecurity firm responsibly disclosed its findings to Apache, the maintainers of Guacamole, on March 31, the company released a patched version in June 2020. Apache Guacamole is a popular open-source clientless remote desktop gateways solution. When installed on a company'

Microsoft yesterday quietly released out-of-band software updates to patch two high-risk security vulnerabilities affecting hundreds of millions of Windows 10 and Server editions' users. To be noted, Microsoft rushed to deliver patches almost two weeks before the upcoming monthly 'Patch Tuesday Updates' scheduled for 14th July. That's likely because both flaws reside in the Windows Codecs Library , an easy attack vector to social engineer victims into running malicious media files downloaded from the Internet. For those unaware, Codecs is a collection of support libraries that help the Windows operating system to play, compress and decompress various audio and video file extensions. The two newly disclosed security vulnerabilities, assigned CVE-2020-1425 and CVE-2020-1457 , are both remote code execution bugs that could allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code and control the compromised Windows computer. According to Microsoft, both remote code executi