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☐ ☆ ✇ McAfee Blogs

Microsoft Urges Customers to Update Windows as Soon as Possible

By McAfee — July 8th 2021 at 20:35

What happened  

Microsoft has shipped an emergency security update affecting most Windows users. This update partially addresses a security vulnerability known as PrintNightmare that could allow remote hackers to take over your system.  

How does this affect you?  

PrintNightmare could allow hackers to gain control of your computer. This means hackers could perform malicious activities like installing their own apps, stealing your data, and creating new user accounts.  

How to fix the issue

Microsoft recommends Windows 10, 8.1, and 7 users update their computers through Windows Update as soon as possible. Note that an additional patch will likely be required to fully fix the issue, so expect another update prompt from Microsoft in the days to come. 

Additional protection 

For extra protection against malware that may result from a hack like this one, we recommend an all-in-one security solution, like McAfee Total Protection or McAfee LiveSafeIf a hacker takes advantage of the exploit and tries to install additional malware, McAfee Total Protection/LiveSafe can help protect against those attempts. Learn more about our online security products here. 

An alternate solution for tech-savvy Windows users 

PrintNightmare exploits a vulnerability in the Windows Print Spooler service. The step-by-step instructions below will guide you through turning off the service to ensure hackers can no longer exploit the security flaw. The Print Spooler will remain off until the PC is rebooted.   

Step 1: Press the Windows key, and type Services, clicking on the Services App 

Zero Day Vulnerability

Step 2: Scroll down to the Print Spooler Service 

Zero Day Vulnerability

Step 3: Right-click on the Print Spooler Service and click Stop. 

Zero Day Vulnerability

The post Microsoft Urges Customers to Update Windows as Soon as Possible appeared first on McAfee Blogs.

☐ ☆ ✇ Naked Security

S3 Ep54: Another 0-day, double Apache patch, and Fight The Phish [Podcast]

By Paul Ducklin — October 14th 2021 at 18:33
Latest episode - listen now!

☐ ☆ ✇ Naked Security

Apple ships Monterey with security updates, fixes 0-day in Watch and TV products, updates iDevices

By Paul Ducklin — October 27th 2021 at 22:16
A slew of security bulletins from Apple HQ, including 37 bugs listed as fixed in the initial public release of macOS Monterey.

☐ ☆ ✇ Naked Security

Check your patches – public exploit now out for critical Exchange bug

By Paul Ducklin — November 23rd 2021 at 14:36
It was a zero-day bug until Patch Tuesday, now there's an anyone-can-use-it exploit. Don't be the one who hasn't patched.

☐ ☆ ✇ Naked Security

S3 Ep68: Bugs, scams, privacy …and fonts?! [Podcast + Transcript]

By Paul Ducklin — February 3rd 2022 at 16:20
Latest episode - listen now!

☐ ☆ ✇ Naked Security

Adobe fixes zero-day exploit in e-commerce code: update now!

By Paul Ducklin — February 14th 2022 at 22:38
There's a remote code execution hole in Adobe e-commerce products - and cybercrooks are already exploiting it.

☐ ☆ ✇ Naked Security

Google announces zero-day in Chrome browser – update now!

By Paul Ducklin — February 15th 2022 at 19:17
Zero-day buses: none for a while, then three at once. Here's Google joining Apple and Adobe in "zero-day week"

☐ ☆ ✇ Naked Security

Firefox patches two actively exploited 0-day holes: update now!

By Paul Ducklin — March 5th 2022 at 19:06
Firefox just published a double-zero-day patch - "remote code execution" combined with "sandbox escape". Update now!

☐ ☆ ✇ Naked Security

Google Chrome patches mysterious new zero-day bug – update now

By Paul Ducklin — March 28th 2022 at 14:18
CVE-2022-1096 - another mystery in-the-wild 0-day in Chrome... check your version now!

☐ ☆ ✇ Naked Security

Apple pushes out two emergency 0-day updates – get ’em now!

By Paul Ducklin — March 31st 2022 at 23:38
More Apple zero-days - mobile devices, laptops and desktops affected. Update now!

apple-1200

☐ ☆ ✇ Naked Security

GitHub issues final report on supply-chain source code intrusions

By Paul Ducklin — April 29th 2022 at 16:15
Learn how to find out which apps you've given access rights to, and how to revoke those rights immediately in an emergency.

☐ ☆ ✇ Naked Security

Apple patches zero-day kernel hole and much more – update now!

By Paul Ducklin — May 17th 2022 at 09:30
You'll find fixes for numerous kernel-level code execution holes, including an 0-day vulnerability in many (though not all) versions.

☐ ☆ ✇ Security – Cisco Blog

How Cisco Duo Is Simplifying Secure Access for Organizations Around the World

By Jackie Castelli — May 25th 2022 at 16:00

At Cisco Duo, we continually strive to enhance our products to make it easy for security practitioners to apply access policies based on the principles of zero trust. This blog highlights how Duo is achieving that goal by simplifying user and administrator experience and supporting data sovereignty requirements for customers around the world. Read on to get an overview of what we have been delivering to our customers in those areas in the past few months.

Simplifying Administrator and End-User Experience for Secure Access 

Duo strives to make secure access frictionless for employees while reducing the administrative burden on IT (Information Technology) and helpdesk teams. This is made possible thanks to the strong relationship between our customers and our user research team. The insights we gained helped us implement some exciting enhancements to Duo Single Sign-On (SSO) and Device Trust capabilities.

Duo SSO unifies identities across systems and reduces the number of credentials a user must remember and enter to gain access to resources. Active Directory (AD) is the most popular authentication source connected to Duo SSO, accounting for almost 80% of all setups. To make Duo’s integration with AD even easier to implement, we have introduced Duo SSO support for multiple Active Directory forests for organizations that have users in multiple domains. Additionally, we added the Expired Password Resets feature in Duo SSO. It provides an easy experience for users to quickly reset their expired Active Directory password, log into their application, and carry on with their day. Continuing the theme of self service, we introduced a hosted device management portal – a highly requested feature from customers. Now administrators no longer need to host and manage the portal, and end users can login with Duo SSO to manage their authentication devices (e.g.: TouchID, security keys, mobile phone etc.) without needing to open IT helpdesk tickets.

We are also simplifying the administrator experience. We have made it easy for administrators to configure Duo SSO with Microsoft 365 using an out of the box integration. Duo SSO layers Duo’s strong authentication and flexible policy engine on top of Microsoft 365 logins. Further, we have heard from many customers that they want to deliver a seamless on-brand login experience for their workforce. To support this, we have made custom branding so simple that administrators can quickly customize their end-user authentication experience from the settings page in the Duo Admin Panel.

Device Trust is a critical capability required to enable secure access for the modern workforce from any location. We have made it easy for organizations to adopt device trust and distinguish between managed and unmanaged devices. Organizations can enforce a Trusted Endpoint policy to allow access only from managed devices for critical applications. We have eliminated the requirement to deploy and manage device certificates to enforce this policy. Device Health application now checks the managed status of a device. This lowers administrative overhead while enabling organizations to achieve a better balance between security and usability. We have also added out-of-box integrations with unified endpoint management solutions such as Active Directory domain-joined devices, Microsoft Intune, Jamf Pro and VMware Workspace ONE. For organizations that have deployed a solution that is not listed above, Duo provides a Device API that works with any enterprise device management system.

 Supporting Global Data Sovereignty Requirements 

To support our growing customer base around the world, Duo expanded its data center presence to  Australia, Singapore, and Japan in September last year. And now Duo is thrilled to announce the launch of the two new data centers in the UK and India. Both the new and existing data centers will allow customers to meet all local requirements, all while maintaining ISO27001 and SOC2 compliance and a 99.999% service availability goal.

The launch of the new data centers is the backbone of Duo’s international expansion strategy. In the last two years, Duo has met key international growth milestones and completed the C5 attestation (Germany), AgID certification (Italy) and IRAP assessment (Australia) – all of which demonstrate that Duo meets the mandatory baseline standards for use by the public sector in the countries listed above. Check out this Privacy Data Sheet to learn more about Cisco Duo’s commitment to our customer’s data privacy and data sovereignty.

Cisco Duo Continues to Democratize Security 

That is a summary of what we have been up to here at Cisco Duo in the past few months. But we are not done yet! Stay tuned for more exciting announcements at RSA Conference 2022 next week. Visit us at our booth at RSAC 2022 and World of solutions at Cisco Live 2022.

In the meanwhile, check out this on-demand #CiscoChat panel discussion with real-world security practitioners on how they have implemented secure access best practices for hybrid work using Duo. And if you do not want to wait, sign-up for a 30 day trial and experience how Duo can simplify secure access for your workforce.

 


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☐ ☆ ✇ The Hacker News

Watch Out! Researchers Spot New Microsoft Office Zero-Day Exploit in the Wild

By Ravie Lakshmanan — May 30th 2022 at 09:40
Cybersecurity researchers are calling attention to a zero-day flaw in Microsoft Office that could be abused to achieve arbitrary code execution on affected Windows systems. The vulnerability came to light after an independent cybersecurity research team known as nao_sec uncovered a Word document ("05-2022-0438.doc") that was uploaded to VirusTotal from an IP address in Belarus. "It uses Word's
☐ ☆ ✇ Naked Security

Mysterious “Follina” zero-day hole in Office – here’s what to do!

By Paul Ducklin — May 30th 2022 at 23:01
News has emerged of a "feature" in Office that has been abused as a zero-day bug to run evil code. Turning off macros doesn't help!

☐ ☆ ✇ The Hacker News

Chinese Hackers Begin Exploiting Latest Microsoft Office Zero-Day Vulnerability

By Ravie Lakshmanan — June 1st 2022 at 06:02
An advanced persistent threat (APT) actor aligned with Chinese state interests has been observed weaponizing the new zero-day flaw in Microsoft Office to achieve code execution on affected systems. "TA413 CN APT spotted [in-the-wild] exploiting the Follina zero-day using URLs to deliver ZIP archives which contain Word Documents that use the technique," enterprise security firm Proofpoint said in
☐ ☆ ✇ The Hacker News

New Unpatched Horde Webmail Bug Lets Hackers Take Over Server by Sending Email

By Ravie Lakshmanan — June 1st 2022 at 14:56
A new unpatched security vulnerability has been disclosed in the open-source Horde Webmail client that could be exploited to achieve remote code execution on the email server simply by sending a specially crafted email to a victim. "Once the email is viewed, the attacker can silently take over the complete mail server without any further user interaction," SonarSource said in a report shared
☐ ☆ ✇ The Hacker News

Hackers Exploiting Unpatched Critical Atlassian Confluence Zero-Day Vulnerability

By Ravie Lakshmanan — June 3rd 2022 at 03:43
Atlassian has warned of a critical unpatched remote code execution vulnerability impacting Confluence Server and Data Center products that it said is being actively exploited in the wild. The Australian software company credited cybersecurity firm Volexity for identifying the flaw, which is being tracked as CVE-2022-26134. "Atlassian has been made aware of current active exploitation of a
☐ ☆ ✇ Naked Security

Atlassian announces 0-day hole in Confluence Server – update now!

By Paul Ducklin — June 3rd 2022 at 18:59
Zero-day announced - here's what you need to know

☐ ☆ ✇ The Hacker News

Atlassian Releases Patch for Confluence Zero-Day Flaw Exploited in the Wild

By Ravie Lakshmanan — June 4th 2022 at 08:57
Atlassian on Friday rolled out fixes to address a critical security flaw affecting its Confluence Server and Data Center products that have come under active exploitation by threat actors to achieve remote code execution. Tracked as CVE-2022-26134, the issue is similar to CVE-2021-26084 — another security flaw the Australian software company patched in August 2021. Both relate to a case of
☐ ☆ ✇ The Hacker News

State-Backed Hackers Exploit Microsoft 'Follina' Bug to Target Entities in Europe and U.S

By Ravie Lakshmanan — June 6th 2022 at 02:54
A suspected state-aligned threat actor has been attributed to a new set of attacks exploiting the Microsoft Office "Follina" vulnerability to target government entities in Europe and the U.S. Enterprise security firm Proofpoint said it blocked attempts at exploiting the remote code execution flaw, which is being tracked as CVE-2022-30190 (CVSS score: 7.8). No less than 1,000 phishing messages
☐ ☆ ✇ The Hacker News

Researchers Warn of Unpatched "DogWalk" Microsoft Windows Vulnerability

By Ravie Lakshmanan — June 8th 2022 at 14:24
An unofficial security patch has been made available for a new Windows zero-day vulnerability in the Microsoft Support Diagnostic Tool (MSDT), even as the Follina flaw continues to be exploited in the wild. The issue — referenced as DogWalk — relates to a path traversal flaw that can be exploited to stash a malicious executable file to the Windows Startup folder when a potential target opens a
☐ ☆ ✇ Security – Cisco Blog

Lower costs with Cloud-delivered Firewall Management Center

By Ameet Kulkarni — June 9th 2022 at 12:00

Security that is hard to deploy and complex to manage needs to become a distant memory if businesses are to be resilient through times of uncertainty. Even something as critical as a firewall, the sentinel in the security stack, can often require a lengthy setup, ongoing maintenance, and disjointed management. Over the long run, these additional costs accrue and can have a negative impact on security programs. When budgets are constrained, these effects can be exacerbated and become a barrier to providing the level of security organizations need to protect the integrity of their business.

At Cisco we have a rich history overcoming this challenge with Cisco Secure Firewall. Forrester Consulting recently conducted an independent analysis of organizations using Secure Firewall. The study showed that customers realized a 195% in total ROI when managing their firewall fleet through Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center (FMC). Improvements to security workflows through the FMC, which include deploying, managing, and updating policy, were the largest contributing factor to the tune of $18.6 million in total benefits achieved. The Forrester study states that “organizations reduced network operation work streams by up to 95%. Thanks to the latest features of Cisco Secure Firewall and the ease of management via Firewall Management Center.”

We are not done. Today we boost productivity even further, with the new cloud-delivered version of FMC within the Cisco Defense Orchestrator (CDO) platform. This leap brings all the features from FMC into the cloud and consolidates firewall management. Organizations save time, increase security, and gain a positive ROI. With cloud-delivered FMC, manually managing updates is a thing of the past. An agile delivery of updates is built in to ensure uptime, so you can focus on your most important priorities — protecting the integrity of the business with increased firewall capabilities. The CDO platform unifies the lifecycle of policy management across multiple Cisco security solutions in our cloud. By bringing the FMC experience directly into CDO, end users enjoy the same look, functionality, and workflow as on-premises and virtual versions of Firewall Management Center. Without the usual learning curve within a new “experience,” migration to the cloud is simplified. Organizations can now propel cloud-first strategies and enable the rapid delivery of firewall services no matter where your network may roam.

“Moving FMC into CDO isn’t just about cost savings for today and powering security resilience with flexibility and choice. We are also putting a firm foot into the near future for SASE and achieving unified policy across the multienvironment IT.”– Justin Buchanan, Sr. Director Product Management, Cisco Secure

Traditionally, customers have deployed FMC as a physical or virtual appliance. Now in addition to cost savings, security resilience is driving an increased need for hybrid multicloud deployments. Leveraging public cloud infrastructures, organizations are becoming more cost efficient — cloud-delivered applications reduce change management and operational overhead. But they are also ensuring organizations have the agility required to deploy network security workloads where and how they want to remain agile and adapt to uncertainty.

Hybrid work and business continuity is made possible within the CDO platform. A cloud-based and centralized platform unifies firewall management across the Cisco Secure and Meraki portfolio and provides the foundation to unify policy across the distributed network all within a platform that is built to drive increased ROI and preserve the user experience. IT can control and manage firewall policy from anywhere along with a low-touch provisioning and onboarding process for branch and firewall deployments. The cloud-delivered FMC integrates with Cisco Secure Analytics & Logging, and, as a result, enhanced data retention and meeting stringent compliance requirements has never been easier. Whether you are part of a smaller organization or a larger enterprise, you control how many Cisco Secure Firewalls are managed through the cloud-delivered FMC, and easily scale that number. So, when it comes to simplicity at scale, CDO is your answer.

To learn more about Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center, visit our product page and read the entire Forrester report here.


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☐ ☆ ✇ Naked Security

S3 Ep86: The crooks were in our network for HOW long?! [Podcast + Transcript]

By Paul Ducklin — June 9th 2022 at 13:07
Latest episode - listen (or read) now!

☐ ☆ ✇ Krebs on Security

Microsoft Patch Tuesday, June 2022 Edition

By BrianKrebs — June 15th 2022 at 04:52

Microsoft on Tuesday released software updates to fix 60 security vulnerabilities in its Windows operating systems and other software, including a zero-day flaw in all supported Microsoft Office versions on all flavors of Windows that’s seen active exploitation for at least two months now. On a lighter note, Microsoft is officially retiring its Internet Explorer (IE) web browser, which turns 27 years old this year.

Three of the bugs tackled this month earned Microsoft’s most dire “critical” label, meaning they can be exploited remotely by malware or miscreants to seize complete control over a vulnerable system. On top of the critical heap this month is CVE-2022-30190, a vulnerability in the Microsoft Support Diagnostics Tool (MSDT), a service built into Windows.

Dubbed “Follina,” the flaw became public knowledge on May 27, when a security researcher tweeted about a malicious Word document that had surprisingly low detection rates by antivirus products. Researchers soon learned that the malicious document was using a feature in Word to retrieve a HTML file from a remote server, and that HTML file in turn used MSDT to load code and execute PowerShell commands.

“What makes this new MS Word vulnerability unique is the fact that there are no macros exploited in this attack,” writes Mayuresh Dani, manager of threat research at Qualys. “Most malicious Word documents leverage the macro feature of the software to deliver their malicious payload. As a result, normal macro-based scanning methods will not work to detect Follina. All an attacker needs to do is lure a targeted user to download a Microsoft document or view an HTML file embedded with the malicious code.”

Kevin Beaumont, the researcher who gave Follina its name, penned a fairly damning account and timeline of Microsoft’s response to being alerted about the weakness. Beaumont says researchers in March 2021 told Microsoft they were able achieve the same exploit using Microsoft Teams as an example, and that Microsoft silently fixed the issue in Teams but did not patch MSDT in Windows or the attack vector in Microsoft Office.

Beaumont said other researchers on April 12, 2022 told Microsoft about active exploitation of the MSDT flaw, but Microsoft closed the ticket saying it wasn’t a security issue. Microsoft finally issued a CVE for the problem on May 30, the same day it released recommendations on how to mitigate the threat from the vulnerability.

Microsoft also is taking flak from security experts regarding a different set of flaws in its Azure cloud hosting platform. Orca Security said that back on January 4 it told Microsoft about a critical bug in Azure’s Synapse service that allowed attackers to obtain credentials to other workspaces, execute code, or leak customer credentials to data sources outside of Azure.

In an update to their research published Tuesday, Orca researchers said they were able to bypass Microsoft’s fix for the issue twice before the company put a working fix in place.

“In previous cases, vulnerabilities were fixed by the cloud providers within a few days of our disclosure to the affected vendor,” wrote Orca’s Avi Shua. “Based on our understanding of the architecture of the service, and our repeated bypasses of fixes, we think that the architecture contains underlying weaknesses that should be addressed with a more robust tenant separation mechanism. Until a better solution is implemented, we advise that all customers assess their usage of the service and refrain from storing sensitive data or keys in it.”

Amit Yoran, CEO of Tenable and a former U.S. cybersecurity czar, took Microsoft to task for silently patching an issue Tenable reported in the same Azure Synapse service.

“It was only after being told that we were going to go public, that their story changed…89 days after the initial vulnerability notification…when they privately acknowledged the severity of the security issue,” Yoran wrote in a post on LinkedIn. “To date, Microsoft customers have not been notified. Without timely and detailed disclosures, customers have no idea if they were, or are, vulnerable to attack…or if they fell victim to attack prior to a vulnerability being patched. And not notifying customers denies them the opportunity to look for evidence that they were or were not compromised, a grossly irresponsible policy.”

Also in the critical and notable stack this month is CVE-2022-30136, which is a remote code execution flaw in the Windows Network File System (NFS version 4.1) that earned a CVSS score of 9.8 (10 being the worst). Microsoft issued a very similar patch last month for vulnerabilities in NFS versions 2 and 3.

“This vulnerability could allow a remote attacker to execute privileged code on affected systems running NFS. On the surface, the only difference between the patches is that this month’s update fixes a bug in NFSV4.1, whereas last month’s bug only affected versions NSFV2.0 and NSFV3.0,” wrote Trend Micro’s Zero Day Initiative. “It’s not clear if this is a variant or a failed patch or a completely new issue. Regardless, enterprises running NFS should prioritize testing and deploying this fix.”

Beginning today, Microsoft will officially stop supporting most versions of its Internet Explorer Web browser, which was launched in August 1995. The IE desktop application will be disabled, and Windows users who wish to stick with a Microsoft browser are encouraged to move to Microsoft Edge with IE mode, which will be supported through at least 2029.

For a closer look at the patches released by Microsoft today and indexed by severity and other metrics, check out the always-useful Patch Tuesday roundup from the SANS Internet Storm Center. And it’s not a bad idea to hold off updating for a few days until Microsoft works out any kinks in the updates: AskWoody.com usually has the dirt on any patches that may be causing problems for Windows users.

As always, please consider backing up your system or at least your important documents and data before applying system updates. And if you run into any problems with these updates, please drop a note about it here in the comments.

☐ ☆ ✇ The Hacker News

Google Researchers Detail 5-Year-Old Apple Safari Vulnerability Exploited in the Wild

By Ravie Lakshmanan — June 20th 2022 at 10:10
A security flaw in Apple Safari that was exploited in the wild earlier this year was originally fixed in 2013 and reintroduced in December 2016, according to a new report from Google Project Zero. The issue, tracked as CVE-2022-22620 (CVSS score: 8.8), concerns a case of a use-after-free vulnerability in the WebKit component that could be exploited by a piece of specially crafted web content to
☐ ☆ ✇ The Hacker News

Hackers Exploit Mitel VoIP Zero-Day in Likely Ransomware Attack

By Ravie Lakshmanan — June 24th 2022 at 12:58
A suspected ransomware intrusion attempt against an unnamed target leveraged a Mitel VoIP appliance as an entry point to achieve remote code execution and gain initial access to the environment. The findings come from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, which traced the source of the attack to a Linux-based Mitel VoIP device sitting on the network perimeter, while also identifying a previously
☐ ☆ ✇ Security – Cisco Blog

Top of Mind Security Insights from In-Person Interactions

By Shailaja Shankar — June 30th 2022 at 16:13

The past few months have been chockfull of conversations with security customers, partners, and industry leaders. After two years of virtual engagements, in-person events like our CISO Forum and Cisco Live as well as the industry’s RSA Conference underscore the power of face-to-face interactions. It’s a reminder of just how enriching conversations are and how incredibly interconnected the world is. And it’s only made closer by the security experiences that impact us all.  

I had the pleasure of engaging with some of the industry’s best and brightest, sharing ideas, insights, and what keeps us up at night. The conversations offered more than an opportunity to reconnect and put faces with names. It was a chance to discuss some of the most critical cybersecurity issues and implications that are top of mind for organizations.  

The collective sentiments are clear. The need for better security has never been so strong. Securing the future is good business. Disruptions are happening faster than ever before, making our interconnected world more unpredictable.  Hybrid work is here to stay, hybrid and complex architectures will continue to be a reality for most organizations and that has dramatically expanded the threat surface. More and more businesses are operating as ecosystems—attacks have profound ripple effects across value chains. Attacks are becoming more bespoke, government-sponsored threat actors and ransomware as a service, continue to unravel challenging businesses to minimize the time from initial breach to complete compromise, in the event of a compromise.  

Digital transformation and Zero Trust 

Regardless of where organizations are on their digital transformations, they are progressively embarking upon journeys to unify networking and secure connectivity needs. Mobility, BYOD (bring your own device), cloud, increased collaboration, and the consumerization of IT have necessitated a new type of access control security–zero trust security. Supporting a modern enterprise across a distributed network and infrastructure involves the ability to validate user IDs, continuously verify authentication and device trust, and protect every application— 

without compromising user experience. Zero trust offers organizations a simpler approach to securing access for everyone, from any device, anywhere—all the while, making it harder for attackers.  

Seeking a simpler, smarter ecosystem 

Simplicity continues to be a hot topic, and in the context of its functionality. In addition to a frictionless user experience, the real value to customers is improving operational challenges. Security practitioners want an easier way to secure the edge, access, and operations—including threat intelligence and response. Key to this simplified experience is connecting and managing business-critical control points and vulnerabilities, exchanging data, and contextualizing threat intelligence. And it requires a smarter ecosystem that brings together capabilities, unifying admin, policy, visibility, and control. Simplicity that works hard and smart—and enhances their security posture. The ultimate simplicity is improved efficacy for the organization. 

Everyone is an insider  

Insider cyber-attacks are among the fastest growing threats in the modern security network, an increasingly common cause of data breaches. Using their authorized access, employees are intentionally or inadvertently causing harm by stealing, exposing, or destroying sensitive company data. Regardless, the consequences are the same—costing companies big bucks and massive disruption. It’s also one of the reasons why “identity as the new perimeter” is trending, as the primary objective of all advanced attacks is to gain privileged credentials. Insider attack attempts are not slowing down. However, advanced telemetry, threat detection and protection, and continuous trusted access all help decelerate the trend. Organizations are better able to expose suspicious or malicious activities caused by insider threats. Innovations are enabling business to analyze all network traffic and historical patterns of employee access and determine whether to let an employee continue uninterrupted or prompt to authenticate again.  

The interconnection conundrum and the ransomware ruse   

Supply chain attacks have become one of the biggest security worries for businesses. Not only are disruptions debilitating, but no one knew the impacts or perceived outcomes. Attackers are highly aware that supply chains are comprised of larger entities often tightly connected to a broad array of smaller and less cyber-savvy organizations. Lured by lucrative payouts, attackers seek the weakest supply chain link for a successful breach. In fact, two of the four biggest cyber-attacks that the Cisco Talos team saw in the field last year were supply chain attacks that deployed ransomware on their targets’ networks: SolarWinds and REvil’s attack exploiting the Kaseya managed service provider. While there’s no perfect way to absolutely protect from ransomware, businesses are taking steps to bolster their defenses and protect against disaster. 

Data privacy is getting personal 

Security incidents targeting personal information are on the rise. In fact, 86 percent of global consumers were victims of identity theft, credit/debit card fraud, or a data breach in 2020. In a recent engagement discovered by the Cisco Talos team, the API on a customer’s website could have been exploited by an attacker to steal sensitive personal information. The good news is governments and businesses alike are leaning into Data Privacy and Protection, adhering to global regulations​ that enforce high standards for collecting, using, disclosing, storing, securing, accessing, transferring, and processing personal data.​ Within the past year, the U.S. government implemented new rules to ensure companies and federal agencies follow required cybersecurity standards. As long as cyber criminals continue seeking to breach our privacy and data, these rules help hold us accountable.  

Through all the insightful discussions with customers, partners, and industry leaders, a theme emerged. When it comes to cybersecurity, preparation is key and the cost of being wrong is extraordinary. By acknowledging there will continue to be disruptions, business can prepare for whatever comes next. And when it comes, they’ll not only weather the storm, but they will also come out of it stronger. And the good news is that Cisco Security Business Group is already on the journey actively addressing these headlines, and empowering our customers to reach their full potential, securely. 


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☐ ☆ ✇ The Hacker News

Update Google Chrome Browser to Patch New Zero-Day Exploit Detected in the Wild

By Ravie Lakshmanan — July 5th 2022 at 02:55
Google on Monday shipped security updates to address a high-severity zero-day vulnerability in its Chrome web browser that it said is being exploited in the wild. The shortcoming, tracked as CVE-2022-2294, relates to a heap overflow flaw in the WebRTC component that provides real-time audio and video communication capabilities in browsers without the need to install plugins or download native
☐ ☆ ✇ Naked Security

Google patches “in-the-wild” Chrome zero-day – update now!

By Paul Ducklin — July 5th 2022 at 15:55
Running Chrome? Do the "Help-About-Update" dance move right now, just to be sure...

☐ ☆ ✇ The Hacker News

Microsoft Releases Fix for Zero-Day Flaw in July 2022 Security Patch Rollout

By Ravie Lakshmanan — July 13th 2022 at 04:15
Microsoft released its monthly round of Patch Tuesday updates to address 84 new security flaws spanning multiple product categories, counting a zero-day vulnerability that's under active attack in the wild. Of the 84 shortcomings, four are rated Critical, and 80 are rated Important in severity. Also separately resolved by the tech giant are two other bugs in the Chromium-based Edge browser, one
☐ ☆ ✇ The Hacker News

Pegasus Spyware Used to Hack Devices of Pro-Democracy Activists in Thailand

By Ravie Lakshmanan — July 18th 2022 at 15:50
Thai activists involved in the country's pro-democracy protests have had their smartphones infected with NSO Group's infamous Pegasus government-sponsored spyware. At least 30 individuals, spanning activists, academics, lawyers, and NGO workers, are believed to have been targeted between October 2020 and November 2021, many of whom have been previously detained, arrested and imprisoned for their
☐ ☆ ✇ The Hacker News

Microsoft Uncovers Austrian Company Exploiting Windows and Adobe Zero-Day Exploits

By Ravie Lakshmanan — July 28th 2022 at 11:18
A cyber mercenary that "ostensibly sells general security and information analysis services to commercial customers" used several Windows and Adobe zero-day exploits in limited and highly-targeted attacks against European and Central American entities. The company, which Microsoft describes as a private-sector offensive actor (PSOA), is an Austria-based outfit called DSIRF that's linked to the
☐ ☆ ✇ Naked Security

S3 Ep93: Office security, breach costs, and leisurely patches [Audio + Text]

By Paul Ducklin — July 28th 2022 at 15:47
Latest episode - listen now!

☐ ☆ ✇ The Hacker News

New Google Chrome Zero-Day Vulnerability Being Exploited in the Wild

By Ravie Lakshmanan — August 17th 2022 at 12:02
Google on Tuesday rolled out patches for Chrome browser for desktops to contain an actively exploited high-severity zero-day flaw in the wild. Tracked as CVE-2022-2856, the issue has been described as a case of insufficient validation of untrusted input in Intents. Security researchers Ashley Shen and Christian Resell of Google Threat Analysis Group have been credited with reporting the flaw on
☐ ☆ ✇ Threatpost | The first stop for security news

Google Patches Chrome’s Fifth Zero-Day of the Year

By Elizabeth Montalbano — August 18th 2022 at 14:31
An insufficient validation input flaw, one of 11 patched in an update this week, could allow for arbitrary code execution and is under active attack.
☐ ☆ ✇ The first stop for security news | Threatpost

Google Patches Chrome’s Fifth Zero-Day of the Year

By Elizabeth Montalbano — August 18th 2022 at 14:31
An insufficient validation input flaw, one of 11 patched in an update this week, could allow for arbitrary code execution and is under active attack.
☐ ☆ ✇ Naked Security

S3 Ep97: Did your iPhone get pwned? How would you know? [Audio + Text]

By Paul Ducklin — August 25th 2022 at 15:37
Latest episode - listen now! (Or read the transcript if you prefer the text version.)

☐ ☆ ✇ Naked Security

URGENT! Apple slips out zero-day update for older iPhones and iPads

By Paul Ducklin — August 31st 2022 at 18:42
Patch as soon as you can - that recent WebKit zero-day affecting new iPhones and iPads is apparently being used against older models, too.

☐ ☆ ✇ The Hacker News

Apple Releases iOS Update for Older iPhones to Fix Actively Exploited Vulnerability

By Ravie Lakshmanan — September 1st 2022 at 03:24
Apple on Wednesday backported security updates to older iPhones, iPads, and iPod touch devices to address a critical security flaw that has been actively exploited in the wild. The shortcoming, tracked as CVE-2022-32893 (CVSS score: 8.8), is an out-of-bounds write issue affecting WebKit that could lead to arbitrary code execution when processing maliciously crafted web content. WebKit is the
☐ ☆ ✇ Naked Security

Chrome and Edge fix zero-day security hole – update now!

By Paul Ducklin — September 5th 2022 at 15:12
This time, the crooks got there first - only 1 security hole patched, but it's a zero-day.

☐ ☆ ✇ The Hacker News

Hackers Exploit Zero-Day in WordPress BackupBuddy Plugin in ~5 Million Attempts

By Ravie Lakshmanan — September 9th 2022 at 08:19
A zero-day flaw in a WordPress plugin called BackupBuddy is being actively exploited, WordPress security company Wordfence has disclosed. "This vulnerability makes it possible for unauthenticated users to download arbitrary files from the affected site which can include sensitive information," it said. BackupBuddy allows users to back up their entire WordPress installation from within the
☐ ☆ ✇ The Hacker News

Apple Releases iOS and macOS Updates to Patch Actively Exploited Zero-Day Flaw

By Ravie Lakshmanan — September 13th 2022 at 03:36
Apple has released another round of security updates to address multiple vulnerabilities in iOS and macOS, including a new zero-day flaw that has been used in attacks in the wild. The issue, assigned the identifier CVE-2022-32917, is rooted in the Kernel component and could enable a malicious app to execute arbitrary code with kernel privileges. "Apple is aware of a report that this issue may
☐ ☆ ✇ The Hacker News

Over 280,000 WordPress Sites Attacked Using WPGateway Plugin Zero-Day Vulnerability

By Ravie Lakshmanan — September 14th 2022 at 01:51
A zero-day flaw in the latest version of a WordPress premium plugin known as WPGateway is being actively exploited in the wild, potentially allowing malicious actors to completely take over affected sites. Tracked as CVE-2022-3180 (CVSS score: 9.8), the issue is being weaponized to add a malicious administrator user to sites running the WPGateway plugin, WordPress security company Wordfence
☐ ☆ ✇ The Hacker News

Microsoft's Latest Security Update Fixes 64 New Flaws, Including a Zero-Day

By Ravie Lakshmanan — September 14th 2022 at 04:42
Tech giant Microsoft on Tuesday shipped fixes to quash 64 new security flaws across its software lineup, including one zero-day flaw that has been actively exploited in real-world attacks. Of the 64 bugs, five are rated Critical, 57 are rated Important, one is rated Moderate, and one is rated Low in severity. The patches are in addition to 16 vulnerabilities that Microsoft addressed in its
☐ ☆ ✇ Naked Security

S3 Ep100: Browser-in-the-Browser – how to spot an attack [Audio + Text]

By Paul Ducklin — September 15th 2022 at 18:50
Latest episode - listen now! Cosmic rockets, zero-days, spotting cybercrooks, and unlocking the DEADBOLT...

s3-ep100-js-1200

☐ ☆ ✇ Naked Security

LastPass source code breach – incident response report released

By Paul Ducklin — September 19th 2022 at 18:59
Wondering how you'd handle a data breach report if the worst happened to you? Here's a useful example.

☐ ☆ ✇ The Hacker News

Why Zero Trust Should be the Foundation of Your Cybersecurity Ecosystem

By The Hacker News — September 21st 2022 at 12:00
For cybersecurity professionals, it is a huge challenge to separate the “good guys” from the “villains”. In the past, most cyberattacks could simply be traced to external cybercriminals, cyberterrorists, or rogue nation-states. But not anymore. Threats from within organizations – also known as “insider threats” – are increasing and cybersecurity practitioners are feeling the pain.  Traditional
☐ ☆ ✇ The Hacker News

WARNING: New Unpatched Microsoft Exchange Zero-Day Under Active Exploitation

By Ravie Lakshmanan — September 30th 2022 at 04:25
Security researchers are warning of previously undisclosed flaws in fully patched Microsoft Exchange servers being exploited by malicious actors in real-world attacks to achieve remote code execution on affected systems. The advisory comes from Vietnamese cybersecurity company GTSC, which discovered the shortcomings as part of its security monitoring and incident response efforts in August 2022.
☐ ☆ ✇ The Hacker News

State-Sponsored Hackers Likely Exploited MS Exchange 0-Days Against ~10 Organizations

By Ravie Lakshmanan — October 1st 2022 at 06:36
Microsoft on Friday disclosed that a single activity group in August 2022 achieved initial access and breached Exchange servers by chaining the two newly disclosed zero-day flaws in a limited set of attacks aimed at less than 10 organizations globally. "These attacks installed the Chopper web shell to facilitate hands-on-keyboard access, which the attackers used to perform Active Directory
☐ ☆ ✇ Krebs on Security

Microsoft: Two New 0-Day Flaws in Exchange Server

By BrianKrebs — September 30th 2022 at 16:51

Microsoft Corp. is investigating reports that attackers are exploiting two previously unknown vulnerabilities in Exchange Server, a technology many organizations rely on to send and receive email. Microsoft says it is expediting work on software patches to plug the security holes. In the meantime, it is urging a subset of Exchange customers to enable a setting that could help mitigate ongoing attacks.

In customer guidance released Thursday, Microsoft said it is investigating two reported zero-day flaws affecting Microsoft Exchange Server 2013, 2016, and 2019. CVE-2022-41040, is a Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF) vulnerability that can enable an authenticated attacker to remotely trigger the second zero-day vulnerability — CVE-2022-41082 — which allows remote code execution (RCE) when PowerShell is accessible to the attacker.

Microsoft said Exchange Online has detections and mitigation in place to protect customers. Customers using on-premises Microsoft Exchange servers are urged to review the mitigations suggested in the security advisory, which Microsoft says should block the known attack patterns.

Vietnamese security firm GTSC on Thursday published a writeup on the two Exchange zero-day flaws, saying it first observed the attacks in early August being used to drop “webshells.” These web-based backdoors offer attackers an easy-to-use, password-protected hacking tool that can be accessed over the Internet from any browser.

“We detected webshells, mostly obfuscated, being dropped to Exchange servers,” GTSC wrote. “Using the user-agent, we detected that the attacker uses Antsword, an active Chinese-based opensource cross-platform website administration tool that supports webshell management. We suspect that these come from a Chinese attack group because the webshell codepage is 936, which is a Microsoft character encoding for simplified Chinese.”

GTSC’s advisory includes details about post-compromise activity and related malware, as well as steps it took to help customers respond to active compromises of their Exchange Server environment. But the company said it would withhold more technical details of the vulnerabilities for now.

In March 2021, hundreds of thousands of organizations worldwide had their email stolen and multiple backdoor webshells installed, all thanks to four zero-day vulnerabilities in Exchange Server.

Granted, the zero-day flaws that powered that debacle were far more critical than the two detailed this week, and there are no signs yet that exploit code has been publicly released (that will likely change soon). But part of what made last year’s Exchange Server mass hack so pervasive was that vulnerable organizations had little or no advance notice on what to look for before their Exchange Server environments were completely owned by multiple attackers.

Microsoft is quick to point out that these zero-day flaws require an attacker to have a valid username and password for an Exchange user, but this may not be such a tall order for the hackers behind these latest exploits against Exchange Server.

Steven Adair is president of Volexity, the Virginia-based cybersecurity firm that was among the first to sound the alarm about the Exchange zero-days targeted in the 2021 mass hack. Adair said GTSC’s writeup includes an Internet address used by the attackers that Volexity has tied with high confidence to a China-based hacking group that has recently been observed phishing Exchange users for their credentials.

In February 2022, Volexity warned that this same Chinese hacking group was behind the mass exploitation of a zero-day vulnerability in the Zimbra Collaboration Suite, which is a competitor to Microsoft Exchange that many enterprises use to manage email and other forms of messaging.

If your organization runs Exchange Server, please consider reviewing the Microsoft mitigations and the GTSC post-mortem on their investigations.

☐ ☆ ✇ Naked Security

URGENT! Microsoft Exchange double zero-day – “like ProxyShell, only different”

By Paul Ducklin — September 30th 2022 at 18:25
Double-play 0-day in Exchange - what you need to know, and what you can do

☐ ☆ ✇ Naked Security

S3 Ep102.5: “ProxyNotShell” Exchange bugs – an expert speaks [Audio + Text]

By Paul Ducklin — October 1st 2022 at 14:05
Who's affected, what you can do while waiting for Microsoft's patches, and how to plan your threat hunting...

☐ ☆ ✇ Security – Cisco Blog

The Upcoming UK Telecoms (Security) Act Part One: What, Why, Who, When and How

By Richard Archdeacon — October 3rd 2022 at 16:31

In November 2020, the Telecommunications (Security) Bill was formally introduced to the UK’s House of Commons by the department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport. Now, after several readings, debates, committee hearings, and periods of consultation, the Telecommunications (Security) Act is quickly becoming reality for providers of public telecoms networks and services in the UK, going live on 1 October 2022. Here, we outline what exactly the requirements mean for these firms, and what they can do to prepare.

What is the Telecommunications (Security) Act?

The Act outlines new legal duties on telecoms firms to increase the security of the entire UK network and introduces new regulatory powers to the UK Telecoms regulator OFCOM to regulate Public Telecommunications Providers in the area of cyber security. It place obligations on operators to put in place more measures around the security of their supply chains, which includes the security of the products they procure. The Act grants powers to the Secretary of State to introduce a so-called Code of Practice. It is this Code of Practice which contains the bulk of the technical requirements that operators must comply with. Those not in compliance face large fines (up to 10% of company turnover for one year).

Why has the Telecommunications (Security) Act been introduced?

Following the UK Telecoms Supply Chain review in 2018, the government identified three areas of concern that needed addressing:

  1. Existing industry practices may have achieved good commercial outcomes but did not incentivise effective cyber security risk management.
  2. Policy and regulation in enforcing telecoms cyber security needed to be significantly strengthened to address these concerns.
  3. The lack of diversity across the telecoms supply chain creates the possibility of national dependence on single suppliers, which poses a range of risks to the security and resilience of UK telecoms networks.

Following the review, little did we know a major resilience test for the telecoms industry was about to face significant challenges brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic. Data released by Openreach – the UK’s largest broadband network, used by customers of BT, Plusnet, Sky, TalkTalk, Vodafone and Zen – showed that broadband usage more than doubled in 2020 with 50,000 Petabytes (PB) of data being consumed across the country, compared to around 22,000 in 2019.

There is no question the security resilience of the UK telecoms sector is becoming ever more crucial — especially as the government intends to bring gigabit capable broadband to every home and business across the UK by 2025. As outlined in the National Cyber Security Centre’s Security analysis for the UK telecoms sector, ‘As technologies grow and evolve, we must have a security framework that is fit for purpose and ensures the UK’s Critical National Telecoms Infrastructure remains online and secure both now and in the future’.

Who does the Telecommunications (Security) Act affect?

The legislation will apply to public telecoms providers (including large companies such as BT and Vodafone and smaller companies that offer telecoms networks or services to the public). More specifically to quote the Act itself:

  • Tier 1: This applies to the largest organisations with an annual turnover of over £1bn providing public networks and services for which a security compromise would have the most widespread impact on network and service availability, and the most damaging economic or social effects.
  • Tier 2 providers would be those medium-sized companies with an annual turnover of more than £50m, providing networks and services for which security compromises would have an impact on critical national infrastructure (CNI) or regional availability with potentially significant security, economic or social effects.
  • Tier 3 providers would be the smallest companies with an annual turnover of less than £50m in the market that are not micro-entities. While security compromises to their networks or services could affect their customers, if those networks and services do not support CNI such compromises would not significantly affect national or regional availability.

When do companies need to start adhering to the Telecommunications (Security) Act?

As the requirements are long and varied and so the timelines to comply have been broken down to help organisations comply. The current Code of Practice expects Tier 1 providers to implement ‘the most straightforward and least resource intensive measures’ by 31 March 2024, and the more complex and resource intensive measures by 31 March 2025.

Tier 2 firms have been given an extra two years on top of the dates outlined above to reflect the relative sizes of providers. Tier 3 providers aren’t in scope of the regulatory changes currently but are strongly encouraged to use the Code of Practice as best practice. The Code of Practice also expects that these firms ‘must continue to take appropriate and proportionate measures to comply with their new duties under the Act and the regulations’.

How can firms prepare for the Telecommunications (Security) Act?

The TSA introduces a range of new requirements for those in the telecoms industry to understand and follow. These will require a multi-year programme for affected organisations.  An area of high focus for example will be on Third Party controls and managing the relationship with them.

However there are more common security requirements as well.  From our work with many companies across many different industries, we know that establishing that users accessing corporate systems, data and applications are who they say they are is  a key aspect of reducing risk by limiting the possibility of attacks coming in through the front door. This is a very real risk highlighted in Verizon’s 2022 Data Breaches Investigations Report, which states that around 82% of data breaches involved a human element, including incidents in which employees expose information directly or making a mistake that enables cyber criminals to access the organisation’s systems.

Therefore, one area to start to try and protect the organisation and take a step on the way to compliance is to build up authentication and secure access to systems, data and applications. However even this can take time to implement over large complex environments. It means gaining an understanding of all devices and ensuring there is a solid profile around them, so they can be reported on, attacks can be blocked and prevented, and access to applications can be controlled as needed.

Where can you find more insight on Telecommunications (Security) Act?

We will be creating more information around the Act as we move closer to the deadlines, including part two of this blog where we will take a deeper dive into themes introduced by the bill, how it compare with other industries’ and jurisdictions’ cyber security initiatives, and explore what else the telecoms industry can do to improve its security posture.

We are also running an event in London on 13 October: ‘Are you ready for TSA?’ which will include peer discussions where participation is welcome on the TSA. If you are interested in attending, please register here.

Register to attend the discussion on the new Telecom Security Act:

Are you ready for TSA?

 


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