AUSCERT Week in Review for 08th January 2021 Greetings, Welcome to 2021. We hope all our readers enjoyed a well-deserved break over the Christmas and New Year period. We would like to highlight the following article from colleagues at Data @ UQ “What’s your (cyber and data safety) New Year’s resolution” – a relevant read to kick off the year! This week we’re thrilled to announce the first keynote speaker at our annual conference AUSCERT2021. Ciaran Martin, founding CEO of the National Cyber Security Centre and now a Professor at the University of Oxford will be joining us virtually from the UK. We look forward to hearing him speak at the conference and his thoughts on the future of our sector and conference theme “SOARing with cyber.” Don’t forget – our AUSCERT2021 Call for Papers initiative is still open until the end of this month. Those wanting feedback from our committee are encouraged to submit by Monday 11 January. Help us celebrate the 20th anniversary of Australia’s original and oldest information security conference! And last but not least, keep your eyes peeled as we announce our Strategic Plans for 2021. The team is also working hard on our 2020 Year in Review document and look forward to sharing this in the next few weeks. Until next week folks, have a good weekend. Stay safe and let’s remember to keep washing our hands and practise those good Covid-safe habits. Set up your own malware analysis pipeline with Karton – CERT Polska Date: 2020-12-30 Author: CERT Polska [CERT Polska is a fellow member of the international forum of response teams – FIRST – and is the first Polish computer emergency response team.] What is Karton? Karton is a robust framework for lightweight and flexible analysis backends. It can be used to connect malware analysis systems into a robust pipeline with very little effort. CISA Releases Free Detection Tool for Azure/M365 Environment Date: 2020-12-24 Author: Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) CISA has created a free tool for detecting unusual and potentially malicious activity that threatens users and applications in an Azure/Microsoft O365 environment. The tool is intended for use by incident responders and is narrowly focused on activity that is endemic to the recent identity- and authentication-based attacks seen in multiple sectors. China’s APT hackers move to ransomware attacks Date: 2021-01-04 Author: Bleeping Computer Security researchers investigating a set of ransomware incidents at multiple companies discovered malware indicating that the attacks may be the work of a hacker group believed to operate on behalf of China. Although the attacks lack the sophistication normally seen with advanced threat actors, there is strong evidence linking them to APT27, a group normally involved in cyber espionage campaigns, also known as TG-3390, Emissary Panda, BRONZE UNION, Iron Tiger, and LuckyMouse. ANU uses new security capabilities to help other Unis fend off attacks Date: 2021-01-05 Author: iTnews The Australian National University says it has been able to help other unnamed universities “fend off attacks” using new capabilities it set up in the early part of a five-year information security program. The program, described at a high level in a parliamentary submission released at the end of last year, comes after ANU was targeted by an advanced persistent threat (APT) actor that led to two data breaches. Beware: PayPal phishing texts state your account is ‘limited’ Date: 2021-01-03 Author: Bleeping Computer A PayPal text message phishing campaign is underway that attempts to steal your account credentials and other sensitive information that can be used for identity theft. When PayPal detects suspicious or fraudulent activity on an account, the account will have its status set to “limited,” which will put temporary restrictions on withdrawing, sending, or receiving money. WhatsApp: Share your data with Facebook or delete your account Date: 2021-01-06 Author: Bleeping Computer After WhatsApp updated its Privacy Policy and Terms of Service on Monday with additional info on how it handles users’ data, the company is now notifying users through the mobile app that, starting February, they will be required to share their data with Facebook. ESB-2021.0024 – chromium: Multiple vulnerabilities Multiple security issues were discovered in the Chromium web browser, which could result in the execution of arbitrary code, denial of service or information disclosure. ESB-2021.0011 – MozillaThunderbird: Multiple vulnerabilities A security update for MozillaThunderbird fixes 9 vulnerabilities in Mozilla Thunderbird 78.6 and Mozilla Thunderbird 78.5.1. ASB-2021.0001 – Google Android devices: Multiple vulnerabilities Multiple vulnerabilities have been identified in Google Android devices which can be fixed by updating to the latest versions. ESB-2021.0067 – Firefox & Firefox ESR: Multiple vulnerabilities Multiple security vulnerabilities fixed in Firefox 84.0.2, Firefox for Android 84.1.3 and Firefox ESR 78.6.1 ESB-2021.0064 – pacemaker: Multiple vulnerabilities Several security vulnerabilities were addressed in pacemaker, a cluster resource manager Stay safe, stay patched and have a good weekend! The AUSCERT team

AUSCERT Week in Review for 24th December 2020 Greetings, This week the SolarWinds attack continues to make headlines. A reminder to check out our blog on the topic “Sunburst – FireEye’s Discovery of Trojanised SolarWinds Software”. We will continue to update this with any important developments. With that said, it comes as no surprise to everyone that 2020 has been a particularly challenging year. As the year comes to an end, we would like to thank each and every one of you for your support. In a year where the basic tenets of the working world changed, YOU (our members) helped us get through it. We would like to share our reflections on the year through the following piece we wrote “The Year that was 2020”. A reminder of our scheduled shutdown over the Christmas and New Year period: Membership Will be closed from Saturday 19th of December until Sunday 3rd of January 2021. We will reopen on Monday, 4th of January 2021. Operations Will be closed from Friday 25th of December until Sunday 3rd of January 2021. We will reopen on Monday, 4th of January 2021. The auscert@auscert.org.au mailbox will not be monitored during this period. However, we will staff the 24/7 member incident hotline as usual; so do call us for any urgent matters during this period. And last but not least, don’t forget – our AUSCERT2021 Call for Papers initiative is still open over the holiday season. Perhaps some writing to help break up the routine? Help us celebrate the 20th anniversary of Australia’s original and oldest information security conference. Until next year folks. Have a wonderful and very well deserved break over the holiday season, you have all earned it. Stay safe and let’s remember to keep washing our hands and practice those good Covid-safe habits! NSW Health, Rio Tinto, Serco named as victims of massive global SolarWinds hack attack Date: 2020-12-23 Author: ABC News NSW Health has been named in a growing list of victims of a major global cyber attack by Russian hackers — although it says patient information was not stolen. Key points: – Australian organisations were named in a list of potential victims of a global attack by Russian hackers – Dubbed the ‘SolarWinds’ attack, it has infected thousands of systems worldwide with malware – NSW Health may have been infected since June But while the health agency says its system was not “compromised”, cybersecurity experts said it appeared to be infected with malware. In a worst-case scenario, this could have allowed the hackers to escalate the attack and steal information. Cyber security left out of cabinet reshuffle Date: 2020-12-18 Author: iTnews Prime Minister Scott Morrison has not appointed a dedicated minister for cyber security in Friday’s cabinet reshuffle. Last month, The Australian reported that Morrison planned to create a cyber security role in his cabinet that would be added to the Home Affairs­ portfolio. There were no changes made to the Home Affairs portfolio in today’s announcement, meaning Home Affairs minister Peter Dutton will retain responsibility for Australia’s cyber security policy and coordination. The Cybersecurity Stories We Were Jealous of in 2020 Date: 2020-12-22 Author: Vice Motherboard The end of the year is usually a good time for retrospection and one of our favorite traditions: digging into the archives and recognizing the best cybersecurity stories of the year. Stories so good, we wish we had written them ourselves. Without further ado, here’s the annual Motherboard’s Cyber Jealousy list. 2020: The year in malware Date: 2020-12-21 Author: Cisco Talos To recap this crazy year, we’ve compiled a list of the major malware, security news and more that Talos covered this year. Look through the timeline below and click through some of our other blog posts to get caught up on the year that was in malware. Apple: Here’s how to secure an iPhone or Apple ID ‘when personal safety is at risk’ Date: 2020-12-19 Author: ZDNet [Stalking is a crime in all states and territories in Australia. If you’re spending time with family and friends over the holidays and believe they might be victims of cyber-stalking, this guide may be of use.] This document highlights the steps that an Apple user can work through if they believe that their Apple ID has been compromised, or they want to rescind someone’s access to information that they previously allowed to have access, such as an ex or a family member. ESB-2020.4513 – Red Hat OpenShift Container Storage 4.6.0 security, bug fix, enhancement update Whilst only marked as moderate by Red Hat this advisory contained a whopping 121 CVEs, the most major of which included RCE. ESB-2020.4537 – Security update for slurm_20_02 This advisory for the powerful Linux resource manager Slurm was marked as important by SUSE and contained a RCE vulnerability. Stay safe, stay patched and have a good weekend! The AUSCERT team

AUSCERT Week in Review for 18th December 2020 Greetings, This week saw the sector abuzz with the news regarding FireEye’s Discovery of the Trojanised SolarWinds Software (aka “Sunburst” malware). Our team has blogged about this trending topic here. Please revisit the blog periodically as updates do get posted as relevant. This holiday season, many of us will be purchasing gifts for loved ones online. This is a timely reminder to be wary of online shopping scams and increased exploitation by cyber criminals. We’d like to take this opportunity to re-share the following “Don’t give too much away this Christmas!” article. A reminder of our scheduled shutdown over the Christmas and New Year period: Membership – will be closed from Saturday 19th of December until Sunday 3rd of January 2021. We will reopen on Monday, 4th of January 2021. Operations – will be closed from Friday 25th of December until Sunday 3rd of January 2021. We will reopen on Monday, 4th of January 2021. The auscert@auscert.org.au mailbox will not be monitored during this period. However, we will staff the 24/7 member incident hotline as usual; so do call us for any urgent matters during this period. And last but not least, don’t forget – our AUSCERT2021 Call for Papers initiative is still open over the holiday season. Perhaps some writing to help break up the routine? Help us celebrate the 20th anniversary of Australia’s original and oldest information security conference. Until next week, have a wonderful and restful weekend. Stay safe and let’s remember to keep washing our hands and practise those good Covid-safe habits! Highly Evasive Attacker Leverages SolarWinds Supply Chain to Compromise Multiple Global Victims With SUNBURST Backdoor Date: None Author: FireEye Inc FireEye has uncovered a widespread campaign, that we are tracking as UNC2452. The actors behind this campaign gained access to numerous public and private organizations around the world. They gained access to victims via trojanized updates to SolarWind’s Orion IT monitoring and management software. This campaign may have begun as early as Spring 2020 and is currently ongoing. Post compromise activity following this supply chain compromise has included lateral movement and data theft. The campaign is the work of a highly skilled actor and the operation was conducted with significant operational security. Healthcare security woes: More than 45 million medical images openly accessible online Date: None Author: The Daily Swig Millions of medical images such as X-rays, MRIs, and CT scans are available unsecured on the open web, an investigation by threat intelligence firm CybelAngel has revealed. The research team says it found unprotected connected storage devices with ties to hospitals and medical centers worldwide that were leaking more than 45 million unique imaging files. “It’s important to remember that no hacking tools were used,” David Sygula, senior cybersecurity analyst at CybelAngel, told The Daily Swig. “Millions of images were unencrypted and could be accessed without password protection. “We were surprised to see the extent to which sensitive images were left unprotected, despite the regulations governing health data.” Academics turn RAM into Wi-Fi cards to steal data from air-gapped systems Date: None Author: ZDNet Academics from an Israeli university have published new research today detailing a technique to convert a RAM card into an impromptu wireless emitter and transmit sensitive data from inside a non-networked air-gapped computer that has no Wi-Fi card. Named AIR-FI, the technique is the work of Mordechai Guri, the head of R&D at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, in Israel. Over the last half-decade, Guri has led tens of research projects that investigated stealing data through unconventional methods from air-gapped systems. Scam bitcoin ads using unauthorised Australian celebrity images traced to Moscow addresses Date: None Author: The Guardian Scam bitcoin ads trading off unauthorised images of Dick Smith, Andrew Forrest and other celebrities, which have taken in tens of thousands of Australians, are part of a highly organised global business that uses five addresses in the centre of Moscow, a Guardian investigation has found. The sheer scale of the scam has made it difficult for Google to block them, and for Australian regulators to take action. The fake celebrity ads have run on news websites since at least 2018, but with people stuck at home during the Covid-19 pandemic, many more have been caught out by the scams. IDCare, a registered charity that offers support to people scammed online, has been hearing from a victim every business hour since March, its managing director told Guardian Australia. Service NSW finds cyber attack impacted 80,000 fewer customers Date: None Author: iTNews Service NSW has revised down the number of customers impacted by an email compromise attack against 47 staff members earlier this year, but not before wrongly notifying 25,000 people. In September, the one-stop shop for NSW government services revealed – after a four-month long investigation – that 186,000 customers had their information stolen by unknown attackers. The breach, which took place in March, exposed 736GB of data, encompassing 3.8 million documents such as handwritten notes, forms, scans and records of transaction applications. ESB-2020.4474 – Thunderbird: Multiple vulnerabilities Thunderbird, Mozilla’s email client, was host to multiple vulnerabilities including remote code execution and denial of service. ESB-2020.4464 – Red Hat Fuse 7.8.0: Multiple vulnerabilities Contained a multitude of vulnerabilties including remote code execution, denial of service, cross-site scripting, privilege escalation, and unauthorised access to both confidential and privileged data. ESB-2020.4447 – Firefox: Multiple vulnerabilities Popular browser contained multiple vulnerabilities which granted attackers abilities to execute remote code, cause denial of service, and have unauthorised access to confidential data. ESB-2020.4436 – Samba: Multiple vulnerabilities Samba was affected by vulnerabilities which prior to fix had provided unauthorised access, denial of service and Root compromise. Stay safe, stay patched and have a good weekend! The AUSCERT team

AUSCERT Week in Review for 11th December 2020 Greetings, Well done to all who’ve implemented the latest set of patches from the last batch of Patch Tuesday of 2020! Be sure to read our concise list of our most notable security bulletins below. With two weeks remaining until the Christmas and New Year holidays, we would like to inform you of the scheduled shutdown of our membership and operations teams: Membership: Will be closed from Saturday 19th of December until Sunday 3rd of January 2021. We will reopen on Monday, 4th of January 2021. Operations: Will be closed from Friday 25th of December until Sunday 3rd of January 2021. We will reopen on Monday, 4th of January 2021. The auscert@auscert.org.au mailbox will not be monitored during this period. However, we will staff the 24/7 member incident hotline as usual; so do call us for any urgent matters during this period. This week saw us releasing a joint Cyber Threat Signal 2021 publication with fellow CERT colleagues: KrCERT/CC, CERT-In and Sri Lanka CERT|CC. This publication is a joint prediction of the most pertinent cyber threats that 2021 may deliver. Perhaps to no one’s surprise, ransomware attacks is expected to dominate the sector in 2021 in both volume and its impact. Be sure to read up on how to protect yourselves, as the publication contains a summary list of observations from 2020 that is extended into 2021 along with point-form mitigation advice. And last but not least, don’t forget – our AUSCERT2021 Call for Papers initiative is still open with exactly one month to go to the first initial deadline for our committee feedback. Help us celebrate the 20th anniversary of Australia’s original and oldest information security conference. Do you or someone you know have a great story to tell? We would like to hear it, help us spread the word on Cyber Security! Until next week, have a wonderful and restful weekend everyone. Microsoft December 2020 Patch Tuesday fixes 58 vulnerabilities Date: None Author: ZDNet [AUSCERT ASBs 2020-0216 through 224 relate to this Patch Tuesday, member portal login required. 217 and 219 are related to RCE vulnerabilities.] Microsoft has published today 58 security fixes across 10+ products and services, as part of the company’s monthly batch of security updates, known as Patch Tuesday. There’s a smaller number of fixes this December compared with the regular 100+ fixes that Microsoft ships each month, but this doesn’t mean the bugs are less severe. More than a third of this month’s patches (22) are classified as remote code execution (RCE) vulnerabilities. These are security bugs that need to be addressed right away as they are more easily exploitable, with no user interaction, either via the internet or from across a local network. Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine docs hacked from European Medicines Agency Date: None Author: BBC News The European Medicines Agency (EMA) says it has been hit by a cyber-attack and documents relating to a Covid-19 vaccine have been accessed. BioNTech, which makes one of the vaccines in partnership with Pfizer, said its regulatory submission was accessed during the attack. The EMA is working on approval of two Covid-19 vaccines, which it expects to conclude within weeks. The cyber-attack was not expected to impact that timeline, BioNTech said. The EMA did not provide any details on the nature of the cyber-attack in a brief statement on its website, beyond saying a full investigation had been launched. A spokesperson for the agency said it was still “functional”. National interest plan could drive local cyber sector Date: None Author: InnovationAus The launch of an Australian national interest strategy could help propel the growth of the local cybersecurity sector and assist the economic recovery from COVID-19, according to AustCyber chief executive Michelle Price. Ms Price, along with Australian National University National Security College head Professor Rory Medcalf, delivered a National Press Club address on Wednesday on the need for a national interest strategy, and the crucial role cybersecurity will play in the coming years. There have been a number of government policies this year focused on national security and interest, Professor Medcalf said, and now a more cohesive strategy is needed around this. U.S. cybersecurity firm FireEye discloses breach, theft of internal hacking tools Date: None Author: Reuters FireEye, one of the largest cybersecurity companies in the United States, said on Tuesday that it has been hacked, possibly by a government, leading to the theft of an arsenal of internal hacking tools typically reserved to privately test the cyber defenses of their own clients. The hack of FireEye, a company with an array of business contracts across the national security space both in the United States and its allies, is among the most significant breaches in recent memory. Cyber attack could bring down entire financial system: IMF Date: None Author: Sydney Morning Herald The world’s financial system could collapse and create an economic downturn as disastrous as the coronavirus recession or the global financial crisis if growing fears of a devasting cyber-security hack are realised. Research from the International Monetary Fund released on Tuesday found the reliance of the financial system and consumers on digital services was increasingly at risk from cyber attacks that were being fuelled by falling prices for hacking tools and a target-rich environment. ESB-2020.4347 – Adobe Acrobat and Reader: Access confidential data – Remote with user interaction A vulnerability for multiple Adobe Acrobat products was patched. If successfully exploited it could lead to remote information disclosure. Adobe marked this as important. ASB-2020.0217 – ALERT Windows: Multiple vulnerabilities Microsoft patch Tuesday was this week and 23 vulnerabilities across Windows operating systems were patched. ASB-2020.0220 – Microsoft Office, Microsoft Office Services and Web Apps: Multiple vulnerabilities Another Microsoft patch Tuesday release, 15 vulnerabilities were patched across the Microsoft Office suite of applications. Stay safe, stay patched and have a good weekend! The AUSCERT team

AUSCERT Week in Review for 4th December 2020 Greetings, It’s officially summer season here in Australia, we hope that everyone’s taking care of themselves as we embrace the change in weather. We would like to begin this week by commending our colleague Mal Parkinson who was a panel member on a session hosted by the by the Australian Women in Security Network (AWSN) for their AWSN Cadets “Security Sessions” initiative. The panel discussed the topic of “Life before Cyber Security, how did you start?” and we’ve summarised some key advice from this session via our LinkedIn page here. Some sage tips for all those wanting to move into the cyber security sector or are simply starting out as a new graduate. This week also saw us supporting the team from AustCyber as they launched the 2020 Update to Australia’s Cyber Security Competitiveness Plan (SCP). A copy of their media release can be found here. In summary, the launch and panel discussion events held by the team from AustCyber highlighted the plethora of start-ups and initiatives in the cyber security sector across the states and territories within Australia. The gamut of activities certainly places our country in a position to gain an outstanding posture on cyber security in the coming decade and beyond! Exciting times ahead for our sector. And last but not least, don’t forget – our AUSCERT2021 Call for Papers initiative is now open and will remain so until late January 2021. Help us celebrate the 20th anniversary of Australia’s original and oldest information security conference. Do you or someone you know have a great story to tell? We would like to hear it, help us spread the word on Cyber Security. Until next week, have a wonderful and restful weekend everyone. FBI warns of email forwarding rules being abused in recent hacks Date: 2020-12-01 Author: ZDNet The US Federal Bureau of Investigation says that cyber-criminals are increasingly relying on email forwarding rules in order to disguise their presence inside hacked email accounts. Threat actors absolutely love email auto-forwarding rules as they allow them to receive copies of all incoming emails without having to log into an account each day — and be at risk of triggering a security warning for a suspicious login. FBI officials say that the technique is still making victims in corporate environments because some companies don’t forcibly sync email settings for the web-based accounts with desktop clients. Threat actor leverages coin miner techniques to stay under the radar – here’s how to spot them Date: 2020-11-30 Author: Microsoft Security Blog The threat actor BISMUTH, which has been running increasingly complex targeted attacks, deployed coin miners in campaigns from July to August 2020. Learn how the group tried to stay under the radar using threats perceived to be less alarming. New rules to detect, trace and block scam calls Date: 2020-12-02 Author: The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) ACMA has today registered new rules that require telcos to detect, trace and block scam calls. The Reducing Scam Calls Code, developed by the telco industry, was a direct recommendation of the ACMA’s Combating Scams Action Plan. The ACMA has worked closely with telcos and peak body Communications Alliance to develop the new rules and successfully pilot initiatives to reduce the scale and impact on Australians of scam calls. Major telcos report blocking over 30 million scam calls across the last 12 months as they undertook work to trial the identification and reduction of scam calls. APRA targets cyber hygiene and board oversight with new security strategy Date: None Author: iTnews The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) has unveiled a new cyber security strategy and flagged it will step up its review of current cyber compliance, holding boards accountable for shortfalls. The prudential regulator’s cyber security strategy for 2020 to 2024 seeks to lift cyber security standards and introduce heightened accountability where companies fail to meet their legally binding requirements. 7 Simple Ways to Make Your Android Phone More Secure Date: 2020-12-01 Author: WIRED There are a couple of different ways to think about privacy when it comes to your phone. There’s the data that it collects about your actions and interests, and then there are the protections you can put in place to stop people around you from accessing the physical device. Both are important, and there are easy things you can do to improve each of them. ESB-2020.4227 – MozillaFirefox: Multiple vulnerabilities Mozilla Firefox releases an update that fixes 12 issues ESB-2020.4274 – Thunderbird: Reduced security – Remote with user interaction Security vulnerabilities fixed in Thunderbird 78.5.1. ESB-2020.4286 – Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 7.3.4: Multiple vulnerabilities An update has been released that fixes multiple vulnerabilities in Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 7.3. ESB-2020.4284 – Linux Kernel: Multiple vulnerabilities New Ubuntu packages fix several security issues identified in the Linux kernel. Stay safe, stay patched and have a good weekend! The AUSCERT team

AUSCERT Week in Review for 27th November 2020 Greetings, Would you believe it, it’s less than a month away ‘til Christmas and end of year holidays for most folks around the country. We would like to begin this week by congratulating colleagues in Victoria for their tremendous effort in achieving 28-days without any cases of Covid-19. A job very well done! As we begin to creep closer to the merry and festive season, it is a timely reminder for everyone to stay safe online. For cyber criminals, this is also perceived as the season for exploitation. We’ve shared a couple of handy tips through our ADIR articles this week – so be sure to have a read of them below. Next week, one of our very own Senior Information Security Analysts, Mal Parkinson, will be presenting on a panel session hosted by the by the Australian Women in Security Network (AWSN). The panel will be discussing the topic of “Life before Cyber Security, how did you start?” on Thursday evening 3 December. To tune in, please register via the following page. And last but not least, don’t forget – our AUSCERT2021 Call for Papers initiative is now open and will remain so until late January 2021. Help us celebrate the 20th anniversary of Australia’s original and oldest information security conference. Do you or someone you know have a great story to tell? We would like to hear it, help us spread the word on Cyber Security. Until next week, have a wonderful and restful weekend everyone. Law In Order hit by ransomware attack Date: 2020-11-24 Author: iTnews Law In Order, an Australian supplier of document and digital services to law firms, suffered a ransomware infection over the weekend that is believed to be the Netwalker malware. After detecting the attack, Law In Order said it halted many of its business operations and called in cyber security advisers to assist in the investigation and incident response. Law In Order said it had alerted authorities including the Australian Federal Police and the Australian Cyber Security Centre to the attack. Online shoppers warned to be on alert as scams increase, losses climb to $7 million Date: 2020-11-24 Author: iTWire Australians have been warned to be careful when buying gifts this holiday season as losses to online shopping scams have already increased 42% this year as the country enters the busy Christmas-New Year period. The warning from the consumer watchdog ACCC’s Scamwatch service reports that it has received over 12,000 reports of online shopping scams so far this year, with almost $7 million in reported losses. Don’t give too much away this Christmas! Date: 2020-11-24 Author: Data at UQ – The University of Queensland [AUSCERT is proudly a part of The University of Queensland.] For most of us, Christmas is a time of merriment. For cyber criminals however, it’s also the season for exploitation. Did you know that Australians lost over $14 million through scams last December? Common Christmas scams include fake email gift certificates, e-cards and parcel delivery notifications which request either confirmation of delivery addresses or payment to collect or hold a parcel. In these scams, criminals use email, mobile apps, social networking and online forums to siphon money from victims. Don’t be a scam statistic this silly season. Give presents, not data this Christmas. Be careful with the information you share online and follow the tips listed here to protect your data. Microsoft gives Linux a security boost with these new attack detection tools Date: 2020-11-19 Author: TechRepublic Endpoint detection and response (EDR) capabilities for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint on Linux are now available in public preview. Linux EDR will help Defender for Endpoint customers better protect Linux servers and networks and quickly take action against threats, Microsoft said. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint on Linux supports recent versions of the six most common Linux server distributions supported by Microsoft, which includes RHEL 7.2+, CentOS Linux 7.2+, Ubuntu 16 LTS or higher, SLES 12+, Debian 9+ and Oracle Linux 7.2. Hacker posts exploits for over 49,000 vulnerable Fortinet VPNs Date: 2020-11-22 Author: Bleeping Computer A hacker has posted a list of one-line exploits to steal VPN credentials from almost 50,000 Fortinet VPN devices. Present on the list of vulnerable targets are domains belonging to high street banks and government organizations from around the world. ASB-2020.0214 – Chromium Security Updates for Microsoft Edge Microsoft Edge update has addressed multiple vulnerabilities. Edge is also now available on Linux platforms. ESB-2020.4160 – VMware ESXi, Workstation and Fusion updates address use-after-free and privilege escalation vulnerabilities VMware released patches for critical vulnerabilities across numerous products. Local admin privileges are required for this to be exploited. Stay safe, stay patched and have a good weekend! The AUSCERT team

AUSCERT Week in Review for 20th November 2020 Greetings, This week saw us supporting a couple of initiatives. We attended the 32nd Annual FIRST Conference which was held virtually. Despite the time difference, we were able to catch up on a number of presentations delivered at the conference on-demand. Most if not all of you would be familiar with FIRST which is the global Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams. As a proud member of FIRST for the past 24 years, AUSCERT is grateful to have been able to participate again in 2020. The other initiatives we supported this week were the International Fraud Awareness Week campaign which is an initiative run by the International Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) – mainly on our social media platforms. We also supported the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) information campaign called Think Before You Link. The aim of the campaign is to raise awareness of the threat of foreign spies that are actively undertaking espionage and foreign interference in Australia, as well as to provide advice on how to reduce risk and respond to suspicious approaches. We shared this through our ADIR earlier in the week, please feel free to share it with colleagues. And last but not least, don’t forget – we’ve launched our AUSCERT2021 Call for Papers initiative. Help us celebrate the 20th anniversary of Australia’s original and oldest information security conference. AUSCERT members, we would love to see YOUR submissions containing stories, whether it be one of success or failure! The “heart” of our conference has always been about knowledge sharing and collaboration, so if you’ve got a story to share, AUSCERT may be able to provide you a stage. Feel free to share this with your network Until next week, have a wonderful weekend everyone. Retail giant Cencosud hit by Egregor Ransomware attack, stores impacted Date: 2020-11-14 Author: Bleeping Computer [Egregor continues to make waves in the sector, the AUSCERT team recently presented a case study on our Incident Management service which can be found on our website under Blogs & Publications. Be sure to note our 3-takeaways.] Chilean-based multinational retail company Cencosud has suffered a cyberattack by the Egregor ransomware operation that impacts services at stores. Cencosud is one of the largest retail companies in Latin America, with over 140,000 employees and $15 billion in revenue for 2019. Cencosud manages a wide variety of stores in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Peru, including Easy home goods, Jumbo supermarkets, and the Paris department stores. Chrome 87 released with fix for NAT Slipstream attacks, broader FTP deprecation Date: 2020-11-17 Author: ZDNet [Refer to AUSCERT security bulletin ESB-2020.4090.] Google has released today version 87 of its Chrome browser, a release that comes with a security fix for the NAT Slipstream attack technique and a broader deprecation of the FTP protocol. Chrome 87 also comes with a fix for a new attack disclosed at the end of October by Samy Kamkar, a famous security researcher and computer hacker. Cisco fixes WebEx bugs allowing ‘ghost’ attackers in meetings Date: 2020-11-18 Author: Bleeping Computer [Refer to AUSCERT security bulletin ESB-2020.4095.2 on our website.] Cisco has fixed today three Webex Meetings security vulnerabilities that would have allowed unauthenticated remote attackers to join ongoing meetings as ghost participants. Cisco Webex is an online meeting and video conferencing software that can be used to schedule and join meetings. It also provides users with presentation, screen sharing, and recording capabilities. Threat actors abusing the now patched flaws could become ‘ghost’ users capable of joining a meeting without being detected as IBM researchers discovered while analyzing Cisco’s collaboration tool for vulnerabilities. Cyberattacks targeting health care must stop Date: 2020-11-13 Author: Microsoft On The Issues Blog [We are sharing this as an additional read to the alert issued by the ACSC (cyber.gov.au) on Friday 13 Nov regarding the observed increased activity by threat actors using the SDBBot Remote Access Tool (RAT) against the Australian health sector.] Two global issues will help shape people’s memories of this time in history – Covid-19 and the increased use of the internet by malign actors to disrupt society. It’s disturbing that these challenges have now merged as cyberattacks are being used to disrupt health care organizations fighting the pandemic. We think these attacks are unconscionable and should be condemned by all civilized society. Today, we’re sharing more about the attacks we’ve seen most recently and are urging governments to act. Ticketmaster Scores Hefty Fine Over 2018 Data Breach Date: 2020-11-13 Author: Threatpost Ticketmaster’s UK division has been slapped with a $1.65 million fine by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) in the UK, over its 2018 data breach that impacted 9.4 million customers. The fine (£1.25million) has been levied after the ICO found that the company “failed to put appropriate security measures in place to prevent a cyber-attack on a chat-bot installed on its online payment page” – a failure which violates the E.U.’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). ESB-2020.4090 – Google Chrome: Multiple vulnerabilities Multiple fixes for the world’s most popular browser ESB-2020.4082 – Mozilla Firefox: Multiple vulnerabilities Multiple fixes for another popular browser ESB-2020.4095.2 – UPDATE Cisco Webex Meetings and Cisco Webex Meetings Server: Multiple vulnerabilities Fixes released to address ‘ghost’ attackers in webex meetings ESB-2020.4128 – postgresql12: Multiple vulnerabilities PostgreSQL database issues patched Stay safe, stay patched and have a good weekend! The AUSCERT team

AUSCERT Week in Review for 13th November 2020 Greetings, This week we launched our AUSCERT2021 Call for Papers initiative. Help us celebrate the 20th anniversary of Australia’s original and oldest information security conference. AUSCERT members, we would love to see YOUR submissions containing stories – whether they’re of success or failure! The “heart” of our conference has always been about knowledge sharing and collaboration, so if you’ve got a story to share, AUSCERT may be able to provide you a stage. Feel free to share this with your network. This week we also celebrated NAIDOC Week 2020 with friends from Baidam Solutions. We were proud to host a panel session and an online screening of the film “In My Blood It Runs”. This film is an observational feature documentary following 10-yr-old Arrernte Aboriginal boy Dujuan as he grows up in Alice Springs, Australia. The work we do in terms of reconciliation in this country is ongoing, the producers of this film have shared a resource of First Nations-led solutions we can all explore here. With November 2020’s Patch Tuesday taking place this week, be sure to note our Security Bulletins highlighted below. And last but not least, we would like to quickly highlight the following alert issued by the ACSC (cyber.gov.au) just this morning on the SDBBot targeting our country’s health sector. For those of you who celebrate – Happy Diwali, may it be filled with light despite the year we’ve all had. Until next week, have a wonderful weekend everyone. Intel fixes 95 vulnerabilities in November 2020 Platform Update Date: 2020-11-11 Author: Bleeping Computer [AUSCERT issued an alert on CVE-2020-12321 and 12322 yesterday, please refer to ESB-2020.3962] Intel addressed 95 vulnerabilities as part of the November 2020 Patch Tuesday, including critical ones affecting Intel Wireless Bluetooth products and Intel Active Management Technology (AMT). The issues were detailed in the 40 security advisories published by Intel on its Product Security Center, with the company having delivered security and functional updates to users through the Intel Platform Update (IPU) process. Microsoft, Amazon, Cisco, Salesforce alarmed at security incident response takeover by govt Date: 2020-11-09 Author: iTnews Microsoft, AWS, Telstra, Cisco and Salesforce reacted with alarm at the prospect of direct administrative intervention by Australian authorities to counter cyber security threats against certain customers. Draft laws proposed by Home Affairs include “last resort” government assistance powers that, in “exceptional circumstances”, would allow the government to intervene in a particularly threatening attack scenario. The powers are broad – allowing the government to install programs, “access, add, restore, copy, alter or delete data”, alter the “functioning” of hardware or remove it entirely from premises, according to an exposure draft of the bill published today. IoT security is a mess. These guidelines could help fix that. Date: 2020-11-10 Author: ZDNet The supply chain around the Internet of Things (IoT) has become the weak link in cybersecurity, potentially leaving organisations open to cyber attacks via vulnerabilities they’re not aware of. But a newly released set of guidelines aims to ensure that security forms part of the entire lifespan of IoT product development. New guidelines from European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) recommend that all stages of the IoT device lifecycle need to be considered to help ensure devices are secure. Chinese hacking competition cracks Chrome, ESXi, Windows 10, iOS 14, Galaxy 20, Qemu, and more Date: 2020-11-09 Author: The Register VMware has taken the unusual step of warning about an imminent security advisory after a Chinese team successfully popped its flagship product. News of the crack came from Tianfu Cup, a hacking contest staged in China over the weekend and modelled on events like “Pwn2Own” where vendors allow teams to take down their wares under controlled conditions. The targets for the competition included the iPhone 11 running the new iOS 14, and the big four browsers – Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Edge. Cup organisers said 11 of the attacks succeeded. Play Store identified as main distribution vector for most Android malware Date: 2020-11-11 Author: ZDNet The official Google Play Store has been identified as the primary source of malware installs on Android devices in a recent academic study — considered the largest one of its kind carried out to date. Using telemetry data provided by NortonLifeLock (formerly Symantec), researchers analyzed the origin of app installations on more than 12 million Android devices for a four-month period between June and September 2019. In total, researchers looked at more than 34 million APK (Android application) installs for 7.9 million unique apps. ESB-2020.4051 – Apache OpenOffice: Execute arbitrary code/commands – Remote with user interaction A malicious document can contain links to any executable on the system triggered via a single click. ESB-2020.4043 – MISP: Multiple vulnerabilities An important SSRF vulnerability fixed, and numerous improvements. ESB-2020.3962 – Intel Wireless Bluetooth products: Multiple vulnerabilities One of around 40 Intel advisories released this week. This wireless issue is remotely exploitable. ASB-2020.0206 – Microsoft Windows: Multiple vulnerabilities Microsoft released numerous fixes for many products this week as part of its monthly ‘Patch Tuesday’. Stay safe, stay patched and have a good weekend! The AUSCERT team

AUSCERT Week in Review for 6th November 2020 Greetings, This week, our team enjoyed participating in the Inaugural AHECS Cybersecurity Summit “Bridging the Gap”. Well done to all partners involved: AARNet, Australian Access Federation (AAF), REANNZ and especially to the team from CAUDIT. Several great takeaways from the presentations delivered over the 2.5 days which focussed on the various cybersecurity threats and safeguard measurements we should be adopting in order to protect the reputation of Australasia’s universities. We also sat down with Sean, an analyst in our team, to put together a case study on AUSCERT’s Incident Management service; one that is integral to our organisation as a CERT. Coincidentally, this week marks our 24th anniversary as part of FIRST, very proud of our rich history as a CERT! Next week will see us celebrating NAIDOC Week 2020 with friends from Baidam Solutions. We are pleased to invite you to an online screening of the film “In My Blood It Runs” on Thursday 12 November. This film is an observational feature documentary following 10-yr-old Arrernte Aboriginal boy Dujuan as he grows up Alice Springs, Australia. Preceding this screening will be a 20-minute panel discussion. For further details and to RSVP, please visit our website here. Last but not least, we must apologise – due to unforeseen circumstances, we have had to delay the launch of our AUSCERT2021 Call for Papers initiative. We’re confident this will be announced early next week though. So please keep an eye out for details on this launch on our communication channels. Until next week, have a wonderful weekend everyone. UK cyber-threat agency confronts Covid-19 attacks Date: 2020-11-03 Author: BBC News [The NCSC Annual Review 2020 was released on 03 Nov; to find out more, please refer to their website directly.] More than a quarter of the incidents which the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) responded to were Covid-related, according to its latest annual report. The review covers the period from September 2019 to August 2020, so the pandemic occupied an even higher proportion of the agency’s efforts after the first lockdown began. In total there were 723 incidents of all kinds, marking close to a 10% rise on the previous period. Of those, 194 were Covid-related. Sustained targeting of the health sector Date: 2020-10-30 Author: ACSC (cyber.gov.au) [Further resources can also be found on the AUSCERT LinkedIn page] The Australian Signals Directorate’s Australian Cyber Security Centre has identified a sustained campaign by sophisticated cybercrime actors impacting the Australian health sector. We continue to see activity against the health sector similar to the increase of identified Emotet activity in Advisory 2020-17: Resumption of Emotet malware campaign. This type of campaign is not limited to Australia, with the United States of America Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) recently issuing a cyber security alert. This alert identifies a campaign, with Emotet and TrickBot being used to further deploy Conti or Ryuk ransomware variants. The alert also provides detection and mitigation advice. While this campaign is targeted at the health sector, the ACSC recommends that all Australian organisations read the two documents linked above and follow their recommended mitigation advice. Google patches second Chrome zero-day in two weeks Date: 2020-11-02 Author: ZDNet Google has released a security update today for its Chrome web browser that patches ten security bugs, including one zero-day vulnerability [identified as CVE-2020-16009] that is currently actively exploited in the wild. In typical Google fashion, details about the zero-day and the group exploiting the bug have not been made public — as a way to allow Chrome users more time to install the updates and prevent other threat actors from developing their own exploits for the same zero-day. Govt kicks off long-awaited Privacy Act review Date: 2020-10-30 Author: iTnews The federal government has kicked off its review of the Privacy Act, which will consider whether Australians should have the right to have their personal information erased like in the European Union, among other reforms. Attorney-General Christian Porter on Friday released the terms of reference for the wide-ranging review that the government committed to undertake in response to the digital platforms inquiry in December 2019. The review will consider whether the Privacy Act, which has not been amended since the introduction of the Australian Privacy Principles (APP) in 2012, remains fit for purpose in the digital economy. The energy-sector threat: How to address cybersecurity vulnerabilities Date: 2020-11-03 Author: McKinsey & Company Electric-power and gas companies are especially vulnerable to cyberattacks, but a structured approach that applies communication, organizational, and process frameworks can significantly reduce cyber-related risks. ESB-2020.3893 – gnome: Multiple vulnerabilities Gnome vulnerabilities offered attackers opportunity to complete remote code execution, denial of service, cross-site scripting, and privileged & confidential data access. ESB-2020.3833.2 – Cisco IOS XR Software: Multiple vulnerabilities Cisco’s enhanced Preboot eXecution Environment (PXE) boot loader for Cisco IOS XR 64-bit Software allowed an unauthenticated, remote attacker to execute unsigned code during the PXE boot process on an affected device. ESB-2020.3818 – Cisco Identity Services Engine: Multiple vulnerabilities Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) web-based management interface vulnerabilities allows an authenticated, remote attacker with administrative credentials to conduct cross-site scripting, remote code execution attacks, and compromise root. ESB-2020.3598.2 – UPDATE VMware Products: Multiple vulnerabilities VMware have updated patch version details associated with their earlier advisory after release of ESXi patches that completed the incomplete fix for CVE-2020-3992, which carries a 9.8 Critical CVSS3 score. ESB-2020.3789 – ALERT wordpress: Multiple vulnerabilities Multiple vulnerabilites reported against WordPress, permitting opportunity for remote code execution, privilege escalation, cross-site request forgery, denial of service and cross-site scripting attacks. ESB-2020.3777 – BIG-IP Products: Multiple vulnerabilities BIG-IP Products affected by Administrator compromise, remote code execution and cross-site Scripting vulnerabilities. Stay safe, stay patched and have a good weekend! The AUSCERT team

AUSCERT Week in Review for 30th October 2020 Greetings, This week, our team enjoyed participating in the range of initiatives that took place for AU CyberWeek2020, well done to colleagues from AustCyber for their wonderful work in pulling this event off. Next week sees us supporting the Inaugural AHECS Cybersecurity Summit “Bridging the Gap”. Coby Prior, our infrastructure Engineer Lead will be presenting on the topic of Honeypots of Threat Intelligence. We look forward to connecting with you at this Summit. Keep an eye out for the launch of our AUSCERT2021 Call for Papers initiative by following AUSCERT on social media Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. Do YOU or someone YOU KNOW have a great story to tell? We would like to hear it! At AUSCERT2021, we want to see you dusting off your playbooks: Security, Orchestration, Automation, and Response will see us SOARing with cyber. Last but not least, don’t forget to complete the 2020 BDO in Australia and AUSCERT Cyber Security Survey by COB today! Do not miss your chance to gain insight into the maturity of your organisation’s cyber security approach. This annual survey will allow you to benchmark your organisation’s current cyber security efforts with industry trends and determine ways to improve its cyber security culture, planning and response measures. Until next week, have a wonderful weekend everyone. Don’t dose up on too much Halloween sugar and Queenslanders – enjoy the state election weekend and last but not least, congratulations again to our friends in Melbourne and the wider Victorian region for their tremendous effort in tackling the Covid curve! Emotet malware now wants you to upgrade Microsoft Word Date: 2020-10-24 Author: Bleeping Computer Emotet switched to a new template this week that pretends to be a Microsoft Office message stating that Microsoft Word needs to be updated to add a new feature. Emotet is a malware infection that spreads through emails containing Word documents with malicious macros. When opening these documents, their contents will try to trick the user into enabling macros so that the Emotet malware will be downloaded and installed on the computer Attackers finding new ways to exploit and bypass Office 365 defenses Date: 2020-10-26 Author: Help Net Security Over the six-month period from March to August 2020, over 925,000 malicious emails managed to bypass Office 365 defenses and well-known secure email gateways (SEGs), an Area 1 Security study reveals. Attackers increasingly use highly sophisticated, targeted campaigns like business email compromise to evade traditional email defenses, which are based on already-known threats. Attackers also often use Microsoft’s own tools and branding to bypass legacy defenses and email authentication (DMARC, SPF, DKIM). Business Email Compromise Date: 2020-10-27 Author: ACSC (cyber.gov.au) [Members, feel free to reach out via our 24/7 Incident Hotline for any BEC related assistance] The Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) has released a new publication – Protecting Against Business Email Compromise (BEC) – to help Australians defend against these deceptive and expensive scams. Security Blueprints of Many Companies Leaked in Hack of Swedish Firm Gunnebo Date: 2020-10-28 Author: Krebs on Security In March 2020, KrebsOnSecurity alerted Swedish security giant Gunnebo Group that hackers had broken into its network and sold the access to a criminal group which specializes in deploying ransomware. In August, Gunnebo said it had successfully thwarted a ransomware attack, but this week it emerged that the intruders stole and published online tens of thousands of sensitive documents — including schematics of client bank vaults and surveillance systems. Massive Nitro data breach impacts Microsoft, Google, Apple, more Date: 2020-10-26 Author: Bleeping Computer A massive data breach suffered by the Nitro PDF service impacts many well-known organizations, including Google, Apple, Microsoft, Chase, and Citibank. Claimed to be used by over 10 thousand business customers and 1.8 million licensed users, Nitro is an application used to create, edit, and sign PDFs and digital documents. ESB-2020.3750 – Junos OS: Multiple vulnerabilities Appliances running Junos OS affected by serious Administrator Compromise and Cross-site Scripting vulnerabilities. ESB-2020.3709 – python-django: Multiple vulnerabilities Contained multiple vulnerabilities which would grant attackers abilities to modify arbitrary files, cause denial of service and access confidential data. ESB-2020.3701 – thunderbird: Multiple vulnerabilities Thunderbird hosted multiple vulnerabilities including remote code execution and denial of service. ESB-2020.3669 – linux kernel: Multiple vulnerabilities World-wide user of the Linux kernel were affected by multiple vulnerabilities including Root Compromise. ESB-2020.3662 – ALERT phpmyadmin: Multiple vulnerabilities Popula phpmyadmin contained remote code execution, cross-site scripting and confidential data access vulnerabilities. Stay safe, stay patched and have a good weekend! The AUSCERT team

AUSCERT Week in Review for 23rd October 2020 Greetings, A number of important security patches to pay attention to this week (Oracle, Google and Cisco) – please refer to our highlighted articles and Security Bulletins section below. Members, a copy of our October edition of the AUSCERT membership newsletter aka The Feed, landed in your inbox earlier this week. Be sure to catch up on all of our membership-related news; it was a bumper edition which also contained a copy of our Q3 2020 report. Our team is looking forward to participating in the range of AustCyber CyberWeek2020 initiatives taking place next week; as well as supporting the Inaugural AHECS Cybersecurity Summit “Bridging the Gap” in early November. Last but not least, don’t forget to complete the 2020 BDO in Australia and AUSCERT Cyber Security Survey. This anonymous survey closes at midnight next Friday, 30 October 2020 and takes less than 10 minutes to complete and by taking part, you will be offered the chance to win one of two Apple Watches. Until next week, have a wonderful weekend everyone. Google releases Chrome security update to patch actively exploited zero-day Date: 2020-10-20 Author: ZDNet [Refer to AUSCERT bulletin ESB-2020.3611] Google has released Chrome version 86.0.4240.111 earlier today to deploy security fixes, including a patch for an actively exploited zero-day vulnerability. The zero-day is tracked as CVE-2020-15999 and is described as a memory corruption bug in the FreeType font rendering library that’s included with standard Chrome distributions. Cisco warns of attacks targeting high severity router vulnerability Date: 2020-10-20 Author: Bleeping Computer [Refer to AUSCERT bulletin ESB-2020.0424.10] Cisco today warned of attacks actively targeting the CVE-2020-3118 high severity vulnerability found to affect multiple carrier-grade routers that run the company’s Cisco IOS XR Software. The IOS XR Network OS is deployed on several Cisco router platforms including NCS 540 & 560, NCS 5500, 8000, and ASR 9000 series routers. UK urges orgs to patch severe CVE-2020-16952 SharePoint RCE bug Date: 2020-10-16 Author: Bleeping Computer The U.K. National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) today issued an alert highlighting the risks behind the recently addressed CVE2020-16952 remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability in Microsoft SharePoint Server. NCSC, the cybersecurity arm of the UK’s GCHQ intelligence service, urges organizations to make sure that all Microsoft SharePoint products in their environments are patched against CVE-2020-16952 to block takeover attempts. Watch out for Emotet malware’s new ‘Windows Update’ attachment Date: 2020-10-18 Author: Bleeping Computer The Emotet botnet has begun to use a new malicious attachment that pretends to be a message from Windows Update telling you to upgrade Microsoft Word. Emotet is a malware infection that spreads through spam emails containing malicious Word or Excel documents. These documents utilize macros to download and install the Emotet Trojan on a victim’s computer, which uses the computer to send spam email and ultimately leads to a ransomware attack on a victim’s network. Big engineering consultancy takes a hit from REvil ransomware Date: 2020-10-22 Author: iTWire The Meinhardt Group, an engineering consultancy with 51 offices worldwide and 5000 employees, appears to have been attacked by a group using the REvil ransomware last month. The group has offices in Greater China, United Kingdom, India, Pakistan, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, the Middle East and Africa, according to information on its website. The group says that, by revenue, it is ranked among the largest independent engineering consulting firms globally. ESB-2020.3611 – Google Chrome: Multiple vulnerabilities The new stable desktop release for Google Chrome patches a zero-day exploit, as seen above it has made the news cycle. ESB-2020.0424.10 – UPDATE ALERT Cisco products using Cisco Discovery Protocol: Multiple vulnerabilities As mentioned above Cisco has warned that CVE-2020-3118 is being actively targeted in the wild. ASB-2020.0176 – ALERT Oracle MySQL Products: Multiple vulnerabilities Part of Oracle’s quarterly patch day this contains a CVE rated at 9.8 that can result in a total takeover of a MySQL cluster. Stay safe, stay patched and have a good weekend! The AUSCERT team

AUSCERT Week in Review for 16th October 2020 Greetings, This week, our Senior Manager Mike Holm joined a number of panel members from Baidam Solutions Pty Ltd and Vectra AI to discuss the topic of “Network Detection and Response”. This event was held in conjunction with the annual Australian Indigenous Business Month. A recording of this thought-leadership panel discussion can be found here. For those of you who missed out on attending AUSCERT2020, good news – content from the conference can now be found on the AUSCERT YouTube channel. Look out for the “AUSCERT2020” playlist to browse through all the presentations we’ve uploaded on there for your viewing pleasure. In addition to this, we’ve also published a couple of blog articles from the winners of our annual awards at the conference. These can be found here, with more to come in the following weeks! Members, keep an eye out for a copy of our October edition of the AUSCERT membership newsletter aka “The Feed”, landing in your inbox early next week. We will be sharing a bumper edition which will also contain a copy of our Q3 2020 report. Last but not least, don’t forget to complete the 2020 BDO in Australia and AUSCERT Cyber Security Survey. This anonymous survey closes at midnight on Friday, 30th October 2020 and takes less than 10 minutes to complete and by taking part, you will be offered the chance to win one of two Apple Watches. Until next week, have a wonderful weekend everyone. … Microsoft October 2020 Patch Tuesday fixes 87 vulnerabilities Date: 2020-10-13 Author: ZDNet [Please refer to AUSCERT bulletin ASB-2020.0161, member portal login required] Microsoft has released today its monthly batch of security updates known as Patch Tuesday, and this month the OS maker has patched 87 vulnerabilities across a wide range of Microsoft products. By far, the most dangerous bug patched this month is CVE-2020-16898. Described as a remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability in the Windows TCP/IP stack, this bug can allow attackers to take over Windows systems by sending malicious ICMPv6 Router Advertisement packets to an unpatched computer via a network connection. Microsoft and others orchestrate takedown of TrickBot botnet Date: 2020-10-12 Author: ZDNet A coalition of tech companies has announced today a coordinated effort to take down the backend infrastructure of the TrickBot malware botnet. Companies and organizations which participated in the takedown included Microsoft’s Defender team, FS-ISAC, ESET, Lumen’s Black Lotus Labs, NTT, and Broadcom’s cyber-security division Symantec. Iranian hackers restart attacks on universities as the new school year begins Date: 2020-10-14 Author: ZDNet A group of Iranian hackers with a history of attacking academic institutions have come back to life to launch a new series of phishing campaigns, security firm Malwarebytes said today. The new attacks were timed to coincide with the start of the new academic years when both students and university staff were expected to be active on university portals. The attacks consisted of emails sent to victims. Known as “phishing emails,” they contained links to a website posing as the university portal or an associated app, such as the university library. The websites were hosted on sites with lookalike domains, but in reality, collected the victim’s login credentials. The most common malicious email attachments infecting Windows Date: 2020-10-11 Author: Bleeping Computer To stay safe online, everyone needs to recognize malicious attachments that are commonly used in phishing emails to distribute malware. When distributing malware, threat actors create spam campaigns that pretend to be invoices, invites, payment information, shipping information, eFaxes, voicemails, and more. Included in these emails are malicious Word and Excel attachments, or links to them, that when opened and macros are enabled, will install malware on a computer. Malware gangs love open source offensive hacking tools Date: 2020-10-13 Author: ZDNet In the cyber-security field, the term OST refers to software apps, libraries, and exploits that possess offensive hacking capabilities and have been released as either free downloads or under an open source license. OST projects are usually released to provide a proof-of-concept exploit for a new vulnerability, to demonstrate a new (or old) hacking technique, or as penetration testing utilities shared with the community. Today, OST is one of the most (if not the most) controversial topics in the information security (infosec) community. ASB-2020.0161 – ALERT Windows: Multiple vulnerabilities Microsoft’s Patch Tuesday included fixes for multiple vulnerabilities ASB-2020.0167 – Microsoft Dynamics 365 (on-premises): Multiple vulnerabilities October 2020 patch by Microsoft resolves 3 vulnerabilities in Microsoft Dynamics 365 (on-premises) ESB-2020.3511 – Adobe Flash Player: Multiple vulnerabilities Adobe Flash Player updates for Windows, macOS, Linux and Chrome OS address a critical vulnerability in Adobe Flash Player ESB-2020.3531 – chromium-browser: Multiple vulnerabilities Update for chromium-browser fixes multiple vulnerabilities Stay safe, stay patched and have a good weekend! The AUSCERT team