Week in review

AUSCERT Week in Review for 22nd February 2019

AUSCERT Week in Review for 22nd February 2019 Greetings, This week, North Korea decides to poke the bear which handed them nukes and Adobe patches a patch. Here’s a summary (including excerpts) of some of the more interesting stories we’ve seen this week: Title: North Korean APT Lazarus Targets Russian Entities with KEYMARBLE BackdoorDate Published: February 19, 2019Author: Sergiu Gatlan Excerpt: “Bluenoroff, a subdivision of the North Korean sponsored APT group Lazarus, recently switched its sights to Russian entities as unveiled by a newly discovered campaign which uses malicious Office documents specifically crafted to target Russian organizations.This is especially interesting considering that Lazarus (also known as HIDDEN COBRA, Guardians of Peace, ZINC, and NICKEL ACADEMY) which became active during 2009 traditionally targeted only entities from countries that oppose the North Korean regime.”—– Title: Almost Half A Million Delhi Citizens’ Personal Data Exposed OnlineDate Published: February 21 2019 Author: Mohit Kumar Excerpt: February 21 2019 “A security researcher has identified an unsecured server that was leaking detailed personal details of nearly half a million Indian citizens… thanks to another MongoDB database instance that company left unprotected on the Internet accessible to anyone without password.In a report shared with The Hacker News, Bob Diachenko disclosed that two days ago he found a 4.1 GB-sized highly sensitive database online, named “GNCTD,” containing information collected on 458, 388 individuals located in Delhi, including their Aadhaar numbers and voter ID numbers.”—– Title: Microsoft Edge lets Facebook run Flash code behind users’ backsDate Published: February 20, 2019Author: Catalin Cimpanu Excerpt: “Microsoft’s Edge browser contains a secret whitelist that lets Facebook run Adobe Flash code behind users’ backs.The whitelist allows Facebook Flash content to bypass Edge security features such as the click-to-play policy that normally prevents websites from running Flash code without user approval beforehand. Prior to February 2019, the secret Flash whitelist contained 58 entries, including domains and subdomains for Microsoft”s main site, the MSN portal, music streaming service Deezer, Yahoo, and Chinese social network QQ, just to name the biggest names on the list.Microsoft trimmed down the list to two Facebook domains earlier this month after a Google security researcher discovered several security flaws in Edge”s secret Flash whitelist mechanism.”—– Title: Adobe Releases Second Patch for Data Leakage Flaw in ReaderDate Published: February 21, 2019 Author:  Eduard Kovacs Excerpt: “The security hole, identified by Alex Infuhr from Cure53, allows a specially crafted PDF document to send SMB requests to the attacker’s server when the file is opened.The vulnerability, similar to CVE-2018-4993, allows a remote attacker to steal a user”s NTLM hash included in an SMB request, and it can be leveraged to alert an attacker when their malicious PDF document has been opened by the targeted user. Adobe released a fix for CVE 2019-7089 with its February 2019 Patch Tuesday updates, but Infuhr quickly discovered that it could be bypassed.”—– Title: Toyota Australia hit by cyber attackDate Published: Feb 21 2019Author: Ry Crozier Excerpt:“Toyota Australia has suffered an ‘attempted cyber attack’ that has taken out its email and other online systems. The carmaker said in a statement that it is still investigating the source of the attack. “The threat is being managed by our IT department who is working closely with international cyber security experts to get systems up and running again,” the company said.”—– Here are this week”s noteworthy security bulletins: 1) ESB-2019.0536 – [Cisco] Cisco Prime Collaboration Assurance: Unauthorised access – Remote/unauthenticated     Prime Collaboration Assurance (PCA) Software could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to access the system as a valid user. 2) ESB-2019.0529 – [Win][UNIX/Linux] Drupal: Execute arbitrary code/commands – Remote with user interaction   Allows an unauthenticated, remote attacker to arbitrary code as the webservers current user.  3) ESB-2019.0551 – [Win][Mac] Adobe: Multiple vulnerabilities    Allows a remote attacker to steal a user”s NTLM hash included in an SMB request.   4) ESB-2019.0488.2 – UPDATE [Cisco] Cisco Systems: Root compromise – Existing account   This vulnerability requires user interaction or an existing account. However successful exploitation could allow the attacker to overwrite the host’s runc binary file with a malicious file, escape the container, and execute arbitrary commands with root privileges on the host system. Stay safe, stay patched and have a great weekend, Rameez Agnew

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Week in review

AUSCERT Week in Review for 15th February 2019

AUSCERT Week in Review for 15th February 2019 Greetings, This week in security, we enjoy the rare sight of sysadmins running to their terminals for Microsoft’s Patch Tuesday and Optus calling their customers “Vladimir” for valentines day. Here’s a summary (including excerpts) of some of the more interesting stories we’ve seen this week: Title: Optus disables My Account site after users complain of privacy breachDate Published:  February 15, 2019 Author: Corinne Reichert Excerpt: “Optus has confirmed that its My Account website is back up and running after temporarily disabling access following complaints from users that they were seeing the wrong customer information after logging in. According to Optus, it disabled the site “as a precaution”.“Optus is aware some customers reported seeing incorrect information when activating their Prepaid service, and when logging into My Account to pay their bill yesterday,” an Optus spokesperson said on Friday. “The Optus My Account website is now operational, and Optus is working with our third-party vendors to identify the cause of yesterday’s issue.””—– Title: RunC Vulnerability Gives Attackers Root Access on Docker, Kubernetes HostsDate Published: February 11, 2019Author: Sergiu Gatlan Excerpt: “A container breakout security flaw found in the runc container runtime allows malicious containers (with minimal user interaction) to overwrite the host runc binary and gain root-level code execution on the host machine.runc is an open source command line utility designed to spawn and run containers and, at the moment, it is used as the default runtime for containers with Docker, containerd, Podman, and CRI-O.According to Aleksa Sarai, Senior Software Engineer (Containers) SUSE Linux GmbH, one of the runc maintainers:The level of user interaction is being able to run any command (it doesn’t matter if the command is not attacker-controlled) as root within a container in either of these contexts:Creating a new container using an attacker-controlled image.Attaching (docker exec) into an existing container which the attacker had previous write access to.”—– Title: Govt moves to extend encryption-busting powers to anti-corruption agenciesDate Published: Feb 13 2019Author: Justin Hendry Excerpt: “The federal government has revealed planned changes to Australia’s controversial encryption-busting legislation that will give anti-corruption bodies similar powers to other law enforcement agencies.Amendments to the Assistance and Access Act introduced to parliament on Wednesday afternoon propose extending the industry assistance powers to eight additional agencies, including state corruption watchdogs.The Australian Federal Police, Australian Crime Commission and state and territory police forces are the only law enforcement agencies afforded the powers as the Act currently stands.”—– Title: Email provider hack destroys nearly two decades’ worth of dataDate Published: Author: Abrar Al-Heeti Excerpt: “All US data from email provider VFEmail was destroyed by an unknown hacker, deleting nearly two decades’ worth of emails, VFEmail said Tuesday.The email provider, which was founded in 2001, scans each email for viruses and spam before they get to someone’s inbox. If a virus is found, it’s blocked from getting onto VFEmail’s servers.“Yes, @VFEmail is effectively gone,” VFEmail owner Rick Romero said on Twitter. “It will likely not return. I never thought anyone would care about my labor of love so much that they’d want to completely and thoroughly destroy it.””—– Title: It’s now 2019, and your Windows DHCP server can be pwned by a packet, IE and Edge by a webpage, and so onDate Published:  13 Feb 2019 Author: Shaun Nichols Excerpt: “Patch Tuesday Microsoft and Adobe have teamed up to give users and sysadmins plenty of work to do this week.The February edition of Patch Tuesday includes more than 70 CVE-listed vulnerabilities from each vendor – yes, each – as well as a critical security fix from Cisco. You should patch them as soon as it is possible. For Redmond, the February dump covers 77 CVE-listed bugs across Windows, Office, and Edge/IE.Among the most potentially serious was CVE-2019-0626, a remote code execution vulnerability in the Windows Server DHCP component.”—– Here are this week’s noteworthy security bulletins: 1) ASB-2019.0054 – [Win] Windows: Multiple vulnerabilities     Microsoft patches 32 vulnerabilities for windows desktop and windows server. 2) ASB-2019.0055 – [Win][UNIX/Linux] Mozilla Firefox and Firefox ESR: Multiple vulnerabilities      Mozilla patches 3 new vulnerabilities in Firefox/ESR.   3) ESB-2019.0436 – [Linux][Ubuntu] snapd: Root compromise – Existing account     A privilege escalation exploit in Linux, named dirty_sock.   4) ESB-2019.0438 – [Win][Linux][OSX] Adobe Flash Player: Access confidential data – Remote with user interaction     An Adobe Flash Player information disclosure vulnerability affecting Windows, Linux, OSX and Chrome OS. Stay safe, stay patched and have a great weekend, Rameez Agnew

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Week in review

AUSCERT Week in Review for 8th February 2019

AUSCERT Week in Review for 8th February 2019 Greetings, This week Apple patched the high-profile FaceTime vulnerability that made the news from last week, and a researcher goes public with a Mac OS key-chain vulnerability that allows a user access to its plaintext credentials without restriction. One in, one out for news-worthy Apple vulnerabilities. To dramatically cap off this week, the Australian Parliament was subject to a cyber attack, the extent of which is still being investigated. Here’s a summary (including excerpts) of some of the more interesting stories we’ve seen this week: China link possible in cyber attack on Australian Parliament computer system, ABC understands08 February 2019Author: Stephanie Borys Excerpt: “Australia’s security agencies are investigating a cyber breach of the Federal Parliament’s computer network that the ABC understands is likely the result of a foreign government attack. The agencies are looking into whether China is behind the incident. In a statement, Federal Parliament’s presiding officers said authorities were yet to detect any evidence data had been stolen in the breach.” —— Apple puts bullet through ‘Do Not Track’, FaceTime snooping bug and iOS vulnerabilities07 February 2019Author: Thomas Claburn Excerpt: “Today, Apple also emitted security fixes for iOS 12.1.4. This fixes the FaceTime eavesdropping bug (CVE-2019-6223) found by 14-year-old Grant Thompson of Catalina Foothills High School and Daven Morris of Arlington, Texas. We understand the teen and his family will get some compensation from Apple, which will also pay toward his education. The OS update also fixes two elevation-of-privilege holes (CVE-2019-7286 in Foundation, CVE-2019-7286 in IOKit), and a vague problem with Live Photos in FaceTime (CVE-2019-7288). Meanwhile, FaceTime has been fixed in macOS, too.” —— Researcher reveals huge Mac password flaw to protest Apple bug bounty06 February 2019Author: Jeremy Horwitz Excerpt: “Apple’s operating systems have recently had more than their fair share of serious security issues, and the latest problem will be enough to rattle millions of Mac users. Previously credible researcher Linuz Henze has revealed an exploit that in one button press can reveal the passwords in a Mac’s keychain. Keychain is where macOS stores most of the passwords used on the machine, ranging from iMessage private encryption keys to certificates, secured notes, Wi-Fi, and other Apple hardware passwords, app passwords, and web passwords. A pre-installed app called Keychain Access enables users to view the entire list of stored items, unlocking each one individually by repeatedly entering the system password, but Henze’s KeySteal exploit grabs everything with a single press of a “Show me your secrets” button.” —— Here are this week’s noteworthy security bulletins: 1) ESB-2019.0388 – [Apple iOS] iOS: Multiple vulnerabilities Apple has released its patch for the FaceTime group chat, alongside two elevation of privilege vulnerabilities. 2) ASB-2019.0046 – [Android] Android: Multiple vulnerabilities Android’s February update is out, with all the usual suspects getting fixes (RCE, EoP, DoS). 3) ESB-2019.0305 – [Win][UNIX/Linux][Debian] libreoffice: Execute arbitrary code/commands – Remote with user interaction Libreoffice documents would happily execute any Python script (and arguments!) in a document-supplied directory. Stay safe, stay patched and have a good weekend! Tim

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Week in review

AUSCERT Week in Review for 1st February 2019

AUSCERT Week in Review for 1st February 2019 Greetings, This week featured some very high-profile vulnerabilities, tech companies abusing each others’ trust, and a great upheaval in name-resolution – leaving unorthodox DNS servers out in the cold. A pass-the-hash vulnerability in Exchange was made public, which allows any user with a mailbox to elevate themselves to the Exchange user, which unsurprisingly, often runs with Domain Admin privileges. Microsoft have not released a patch, but mitigations are available. Apple was forced to suspend group chat functionality in FaceTime, after a teenager discovered its espionage potential. Calling a contact via FaceTime, and then adding yourself as an additional contact to the group would hot-mic the unsuspecting victim, before they had answered the call. Rather than let this capability fall into the hands of pranksters and nation states, Apple wisely disabled the function until a patch is ready. Apple was also forced to suspend Facebook and Google’s enterprise certificates, causing chaos internally as non-public applications (and development versions of their public app suites) would now refuse to run on iOS. This was a result of the companies using the intra-company certificate to bypass Apple’s privacy requirements on the app store, having created data-harvesting apps that lured users in with the promise of gift-cards. Apple has since worked to reinstate certificates for the companies, presumably satisfied that it had made its point. (On or around) February 1st is DNS Flag Day, and authoritative DNS servers that stray from the RFCs and fail to implement the EDNS extension will find themselves receiving the cold-shoulder from upstream servers. If you run such a non-compliant server after Flag Day, then your services had better have memorable IP addresses. Here’s a summary (including excerpts) of some of the more interesting stories we’ve seen this week: Cyber Alert: DNS Flag DayJanuary 30 2019Author: Center for Internet SecurityExcerpt: “On Friday, February 1, 2019, major Domain Name Systems (DNS) software and service providers will remove DNS workarounds that allow users to bypass the Extension Mechanisms Protocol for DNS (EDNS). EDNS is a set of extension mechanisms to expand the size of the DNS message as it goes through its query, which allows more information to be included in the communication between each host in the DNS resolution process. On Friday, several DNS resolver operators, including PowerDNS, Internet System Consortium, and Google, will release updates that implement stricter EDNS handling. This update will speed up the DNS process by forcing everyone to implement the EDNS protocol. Furthermore, the update will simplify the deployment of new features in the future. Consequently, if the update is not implemented on DNS servers, there will be no DNS response to any recursive servers’ request.” —— Severe vulnerability in Apple FaceTime found by Fortnite playerJanuary 30 2019Author: Charlie OsborneExcerpt: “Before the so-called Apple “Facepalm” bug hit the headlines, the mother of a 14-year-old boy from Arizona had been trying to warn the tech giant about the vulnerability for over a week. A FaceTime call made on 19 January by Michele Thompson’s son, as reported by sister site CNET, began the chain of events. The teenager added a friend to the group conversation and despite the fact that the friend had not yet picked up the phone, he was able to listen in to conversations taking place in the iPhone’s environment.” —— Furious Apple revokes Facebook’s enty app cert after Zuck’s crew abused it to slurp private dataJanuary 30 2019Author: Kieren McCarthyExcerpt: “The enterprise cert allows Facebook to sign iOS applications so they can be installed for internal use only, without having to go through the official App Store. It’s useful for intranet applications and in-house software development work. Facebook, though, used the certificate to sign a market research iPhone application that folks could install it on their devices. The app was previously kicked out of the official App Store for breaking Apple’s rules on privacy: Facebook had to use the cert to skirt Cupertino’s ban.” —— Microsoft Exchange vulnerable to ‘PrivExchange’ zero-dayJanuary 29 2019Author: Catalin CimpanuExcerpt: “Microsoft Exchange 2013 and newer are vulnerable to a zero-day named “PrivExchange” that allows a remote attacker with just the credentials of a single lowly Exchange mailbox user to gain Domain Controller admin privileges with the help of a simple Python tool. … According to the researcher, the zero-day isn’t one single flaw, but a combination of three (default) settings and mechanisms that an attacker can abuse to escalate his access from a hacked email account to the admin of the company’s internal domain controller (a server that handles security authentication requests within a Windows domain).” —— Here are this week’s noteworthy security bulletins: 1) ESB-2019.0285 – ALERT [Win] Microsoft Exchange Server: Increased privileges – Existing account Exchange pass-the-hash vulnerability, often leading to Domain Admin. 2) ASB-2019.0042 – [Win][UNIX/Linux] Mozilla Firefox: Multiple vulnerabilities Your usual suite of vulnerabilities for a browser update – RCE, DoS, increased privileges etc. 3) ASB-2019.0044 – [Win][UNIX/Linux] Google Chrome: Multiple vulnerabilities Not to be outdone, Chrome has also fixed your usual culprits in its latest release. Stay safe, stay patched and have a good weekend! Tim

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Week in review

AUSCERT Week in Review for 25th January 2019

AUSCERT Week in Review for 25th January 2019 AUSCERT Week in Review25 January 2019 Greetings, This week has been raining shells for all the lucky pentesters around the world. We’ve had Cisco, Debian and Apple release several patches to address a range of remote code execution vulnerabilities across their products. Here’s a summary (including excerpts) of some of the more interesting stories we’ve seen this week: Title: If you installed PEAR PHP in the last 6 months, you may be infectedDate Published: 1/24/2019URL: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/01/pear-php-site-breach-lets-hackers-slip-malware-into-official-download/Author: Dan Goodin Excerpt: “Officials with the widely used PHP Extension and Application Repository have temporarily shut down most of their website and are urging users to inspect their systems after discovering hackers replaced the main package manager with a malicious one.” “If you have downloaded this go-pear.phar [package manager] in the past six months, you should get a new copy of the same release version from GitHub (pear/pearweb_phars) and compare file hashes,” officials wrote on the site’s blog. “If different, you may have the infected file.”—– Title: DHS issues security alert about recent DNS hijacking attacksDate Published: January 22, 2019URL: https://www.zdnet.com/article/dhs-issues-security-alert-about-recent-dns-hijacking-attacks/Author: Catalin CimpanuExcerpt: “The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has published today an “emergency directive” that contains guidance in regards to a recent report detailing a wave of DNS hijacking incidents perpetrated out of Iran.More security news The emergency directive [1, 2] orders government agencies to audit DNS records for unauthorized edits, change passwords, and enable multi-factor authentication for all accounts through which DNS records can be managed. The DHS documents also urges government IT personnel to monitor Certificate Transparency (CT) logs for newly-issued TLS certificates that have been issued for government domains, but which have not been requested by government workers (a sign that a malicious actor has hijacked a government domain’s DNS records, and is now requesting TLS certificates in its).”—– Title: A vulnerability in Debian’s apt allows for easy lateral movement in data centersDate Published: January 23, 2019URL: https://www.guardicore.com/2019/01/a-vulnerability-in-debians-apt-allows-for-easy-lateral-movement-in-data-centersAuthor: Daniel GoldbergExcerpt: “A new vulnerability in Debian’s Advanced Package Tool (apt) is the latest big tool in the data center attacker’s arsenal. The vulnerability (CVE-2019-3462) is in Debian’s high-level package management system, which is used by system administrators to install, upgrade and remove software packages. The vulnerability can be exploited when administrators install or upgrade software package on vulnerable servers. The apt package management software is part of every Debian based Linux distribution, covering Debian, Ubuntu and a whole group of smaller distributions such as Kali, TailsOS and many others. Distrowatch lists over 100 active distributions (large and small) based on Debian. All of these are likely to be vulnerable.”—– Title: Internet experiment goes wrong, takes down a bunch of Linux routersDate Published: January 24, 2019URL: https://www.zdnet.com/article/internet-experiment-goes-wrong-takes-down-a-bunch-of-linux-routers/Author: Catalin CimpanuExcerpt: “Earlier this month, an academic experiment studying the impact of newly released security features for the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) went horribly wrong and crashed a bunch of Linux-based internet routers. The experiment, organized by academics from all over the world, was first announced last year in mid-December and was described as “an experiment to evaluate alternatives for speeding up adoption of BGP route origin validation.” BGP Route Origin Validation, or ROV, is a newly released standard part of a three-pronged security pack for the BGP standard, together with BGP Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI) and BGP Path Validation (also known as BGPsec).”—– Title: Targeted Attacks Abusing Google Cloud Platform Open RedirectionDate Published: Jan 24 2019URL: https://www.netskope.com/blog/targeted-attacks-abusing-google-cloud-platform-open-redirectionAuthor: Ashwin VamshiExcerpt: “Netskope Threat Research Labs detected several targeted themed attacks across 42 customer instances mostly in the banking and finance sector. The threat actors involved in these attacks used the App Engine Google Cloud computing platform (GCP) to deliver malware via PDF decoys. After further research, we confirmed evidence of these attacks targeting governments and financial firms worldwide. Several decoys were likely related to an infamous threat actor group named ‘Cobalt Strike’. The attacks were carried out by abusing the GCP URL redirection in PDF decoys and redirecting to the malicious URL hosting the malicious payload. This targeted attack is more convincing than the traditional attacks because the URL hosting the malware points the host URL to Google App Engine, thus making the victim believe the file is delivered from a trusted source like Google.”—– Here are this week’s noteworthy security bulletins: 1) ESB-2019.0182 – ALERT [UNIX/Linux][Debian] apt: Root compromise – Remote/unauthenticated https://portal.auscert.org.au/bulletins/74386Man in the middle vulnerability which allows an attacker to man in the middle traffic between APT and the mirror, then inject malicious content into the connection. 2) ESB-2019.0228 – [Win] iTunes: Multiple vulnerabilities https://portal.auscert.org.au/bulletins/74574A maliciously crafted SQL query may lead to arbitrary code and an out-of-bounds read which leads to privilege escalation 3)ESB-2019.0210 – [Cisco] Texas Instruments Bluetooth Low Energy: Execute arbitrary code/commands – Remote/unauthenticated https://portal.auscert.org.au/bulletins/74498Broadcasting malformed BLE frames can cause memory corruption condition, which may result in remote code execution & denial of service. —– Stay safe, stay patched and have a great weekend, Rameez Agnew

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Week in review

AUSCERT Week in Review for 18th January 2019

AUSCERT Week in Review for 18th January 2019 Greetings, As another week comes to a close, we see a nice collection of data breaches. One leak containing 773 million email ID’s & 21.2 million unique, plain-text passwords with a total size of 87GB. There were numerous Oracle security vulnerabilities reported and fixes released, as always, here’s a summary of some of the more interesting stories we’ve seen this week.   Title: 773 million email IDs, 21 million passwords for anyone to see in massive data dump Date Published: 17 Jan 2019 Author: Tomáš Foltýn Excerpt: Nearly 773 million unique email addresses and more than 21.2 million unique, plain-text passwords were there for the taking recently in a massive data dump that’s been dubbed Collection #1. The news comes from security researcher Troy Hunt, who runs the Have I Been Pwned (HIBP) site that enables people to check and also receive alerts if any of their online accounts may have been the victim of a known breach. The stash of data was posted on file-sharing service MEGA and later also on an “unnamed popular hacking forum”, said Hunt. It comprises more than 12,000 files that weigh in at 87 gigabytes in total. —– Title: Employees sacked, CEO fined in SingHealth security breach Date Published: January 14, 2019 Author: Eileen Yu Excerpt: Two employees have been sacked and five senior management executives, including the CEO, were fined for their role in Singapore’s most serious security breach, which compromised personal data of 1.5 million SingHealth patients. Further enhancements will also be made to beef up the organisation’s cyber defence, so that it is in line with recommendations dished out by the committee following its review of the events leading up to the breach, according to Integrated Health Information Systems (IHIS). The IT agency responsible for the local healthcare sector that includes SingHealth, IHIS, said a lead in its Citrix team and a security incident response manager were found to be negligent and in non-compliance of orders. This had security implications and contributed to the “unprecedented” scale of the SingHealth security breach, the agency said in a statement Monday.  —– Title: Massive Oklahoma Government Data Leak Exposes 7 Years of FBI Investigations Date Published: Author: Thomas Brewster Excerpt: Another day, another huge leak of government information. Last December, a whopping 3 terabytes of unprotected data from the Oklahoma Securities Commission was uncovered by Greg Pollock, a researcher with cybersecurity firm UpGuard. It amounted to millions of files, many on sensitive FBI investigations, all of which were left wide open on a server with no password, accessible to anyone with an internet connection, Forbes can reveal. “It represents a compromise of the entire integrity of the Oklahoma department of securities’ network,” said Chris Vickery, head of research at UpGuard, which is revealing its technical findings on Wednesday. “It affects an entire state level agency. … It’s massively noteworthy.” —– Title: Hackers breach and steal data from South Korea’s Defense Ministry Date Published: Jan 16, 2019 Author: January 16, 2019 Excerpt: Hackers have breached the computer systems of a South Korean government agency that oversees weapons and munitions acquisitions for the country’s military forces. The hack took place in October 2018. Local press reported this week[1, 2, 3] that hackers breached 30 computers and stole internal documents from at least ten. The breached organization is South Korea’s Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA), an agency part of the Ministry of National Defense. It is believed that the stolen documents contain information about arms procurement for the country’s next-generation fighter aircraft, according to a news outlet reporting on the cyber-attack. —– Title: Vulnerability Allowed Fortnite Account Takeover Without Credentials Date Published: January 16, 2019 Author: Kevin Townsend Excerpt: Hacking game accounts is a popular — and enriching — pastime. The rise of in-game marketplaces that can be used for buying and selling game commodities has attracted hackers who break into gamers’ accounts, steal their game commodities (and anything else they can find from personal data to parents’ bank card details) and sell them on for cash. The traditional route has always been to phish the gamers’ credentials — and obviously the bigger and more popular the game, the bigger the pool for phishing. Checkpoint recently discovered a vulnerability (now fixed) in the biggest game of all that allowed criminals to gain access to users’ accounts without requiring credentials. Here are this week’s noteworthy security bulletins —- 1) ESB-2019.0163 – [RedHat] Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.7 EUS Final Retirement Notice Redhat issue their final retirement notice for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.7 EUS (Extended Update Support).   2) ASB-2019.0034 – [Win] Microsoft Team Foundation Server: Multiple vulnerabilities An information disclosure and cross-site scripting vulnerability has been found in Microsoft Team Foundation Server.   3) ASB-2019.0035 – [Win] Microsoft Skype for Business Server 2015 CU 8: Cross-site scripting – Remote with user interaction A cross-site scripting vulnerability has been discovered in Skype for Business 2015 server.   4) ESB-2019.0160 – [Ubuntu] irssi: Execute arbitrary code/commands – Remote with user interaction A denial of service and code execution vulnerability was discovered in Irssi due to the way Irssi incorrectly handles certain inputs. Stay safe, stay patched and have a great weekend, Rameez

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Week in review

AUSCERT Week in Review for 11th January 2019

AUSCERT Week in Review for 11th January 2019 Greetings, Judging by the traffic on the roads, most people have started working again! Welcome to 2019!We hope that this week has not been too difficult for you all! Fortunately, apart from some interesting vulnerabilities in Microsoft’s patch Tuesday, most vulnerabilities were quite “un-interesting”. Here’s a summary (including excerpts) of some of the more interesting stories we’ve seen this week: Title: Hacker Uses Australian Early Warning Network to Send Spam AlertsDate Published: 7/1/2019Author: Lawrence AbramsExcerpt: “Over the weekend, a hacker gained unauthorized access to the Queensland EWN, or Early Warning Network, and used it to send a spam alert via SMS, landline, and email to the company’s subscribers. EWN is a service offered by Australian company Aeeris that allows Australian councils, or local governments, to send emergency alerts regarding extreme weather, fires, evacuation information, or incident responses. The unauthorized alerts stated that “EWN has been hacked. Your personal data is not safe.” They then went on to tell recipients to email support@ewn.com.au to unsubscribe from the service.”—– Title: Aussie electoral systems get 24×7 monitoring for 2019 electionDate Published: 8/1/2019Author: Justin HendryExcerpt: “Australia’s electoral systems will be actively monitored around the clock by a new security operations centre during the upcoming federal election. The Australian Electoral Commission has put out the call for vendors capable of providing “short-term, event based security monitoring” of its internal systems in a bid to protect against unauthorised interference.”—– Title: A YubiKey for iOS Will Soon Free Your iPhone From PasswordsDate Published: 8/1/2019Author: Brian BarrettExcerpt: “Over the last several years, Yubico has become close to ubiquitous in the field of hardware authentication. Its YubiKey token can act as a second layer of security for your online accounts and can even let you skip out on using passwords altogether. The only problem? It’s been largely unusable on the iPhone. That’s going to change soon.”—– Title: Samsung Phone Users Perturbed to Find They Can’t Delete FacebookDate Published: 8/1/2019Author: Sarah Frier Excerpt: “Nick Winke, a photographer in the Pacific northwest, was perusing internet forums when he came across a complaint that alarmed him: On certain Samsung Electronics Co. smartphones, users aren’t allowed to delete the Facebook app.”—– Title: New tool automates phishing attacks that bypass 2FADate Published: 9/1/2019Author: Catalin Cimpanu Excerpt: “A new penetration testing tool published at the start of the year by a security researcher can automate phishing attacks with an ease never seen before and can even blow through login operations for accounts protected by two-factor authentication (2FA). Named Modlishka –the English pronunciation of the Polish word for mantis– this new tool was created by Polish researcher Piotr Duszy?ski.”—– Title: SingHealth COI report made public: System vulnerabilities, staff lapses, skilled hackers led to cyberattackDate Published: 10/1/2019Author: Fann SimExcerpt: “A potent mix of pre-existing system vulnerabilities, staff lapses and extremely skilled hackers led to the cyberattack on SingHealth’s patient database last year, said a report from the Committee of Inquiry (COI) into the breach.”[…] ““To sum up, considerable initiative was shown by officers on the front line … It is a shame that such initiative was then smothered by a blanket of middle management mistakes,” the report said.”” Here are this week’s noteworthy security bulletins: 1) ESB-2019.0072 – [Win][Apple iOS][Android][Mac] Adobe Digital Editions: Access confidential data – Remote with user interaction An information disclosure vulnerability has been identified and resolved in Adobe Digital Editions. 2) ESB-2019.0073 – [Win][Linux] Adobe Connect: Access privileged data – Remote with user interaction A session token exposure vulnerability has been identified and resolved in Adobe Connect 3) ASB-2019.0003.3 – UPDATE [Win] Microsoft Windows: Multiple vulnerabilities 27 Vulnerabilities have been identified in Microsoft Windows OS. One of the more interesting ones is a memory corruption vulnerability in the Windows DHCP client where a specially crafted DHCP response could run arbitrary code on the client machine. Stay safe, stay patched and have a good weekend! Ananda

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Week in review

AUSCERT Week in Review for 4th January 2019

AUSCERT Week in Review for 4th January 2019 AUSCERT Week in Review4th January 2019 Greetings, Welcome back to work, and the start of a new year in infosec! We hope you had a relaxing break away from the office, and enough time to enjoy the “life” in your work/life balance. It’s been a quiet week in the news, but don’t let your guard down.Here’s a summary (including excerpts) of some of the more interestingstories we’ve seen this week: Title: Microsoft opens more security features to O365 E3 usersDate: 3 JanuaryURL: https://www.itnews.com.au/news/microsoft-opens-more-security-features-to-o365-e3-users-517461Author: Staff Writer “Microsoft is set to make available extra security and compliance services to users of its lowest enterprise tier for Office 365. The company said in a blog post that it would make available the two new offerings on February 1 this year. The first package of services, called ‘Identity & Threat Protection’, “brings together security value across Office 365, Windows 10, and EMS ‘enterprise mobility and security’ in a single offering” for US$12 a user a month. A second package of services, called ‘Information Protection & Compliance’, “combines Office 365 Advance Compliance and Azure Information Protection”, Microsoft said.” —— Title: Adobe Acrobat and Reader Security Updates Released for Critical BugsDate: 3 JanuaryURL: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/adobe-acrobat-and-reader-security-updates-released-for-critical-bugs/Author: Lawrence Abrams “Today, Adobe released security bulletin APSB19-02 that describes two security updates for critical vulnerabilities in Adobe Acrobat and Reader. In these updates only two vulnerabilities were fixed, but they are classified as Critical because they allow privilege escalation and arbitrary code execution.” —— Title: Data breach sees Victorian Government employees’ details stolenDate: 1 JanuaryURL: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-01/victorian-government-employee-directory-data-breach/10676932Author: ABC News “The work details of 30,000 Victorian public servants have been stolen in a data breach, after part of the Victorian Government directory was downloaded by an unknown party. The list is available to government employees and contains work emails, job titles and work phone numbers. Employees affected by the breach were told in an email their mobile phone numbers may have also been accessed if they had been entered into the directory. The Premier’s Department said it had referred the breach to police, the Australian Cyber Security Centre and the Office of the Victorian Information Commissioner for investigation.” —— Here are this week’s noteworthy security bulletins: 1) ESB-2019.0056 – [Win][Mac] Adobe products: Multiple vulnerabilities Opening a malicious PDF document could lead to code execution and privilegeescalation. 2) ESB-2019.0005 – [UNIX/Linux][Debian] sqlite3: Execute arbitrary code/commands – Existing account An attacker with the ability to run custom SQL queries could achievearbitrary code execution in sqlite3. 3) ESB-2019.0041 – [Debian] tzdata: Reduced security – Unknown/unspecified A new year brings with it new timezone rules, and the possibility ofdate-time errors. —— Stay safe, stay patched, and make this year the best ever for yourorganisation’s security! Anthony

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Week in review

AUSCERT Week in Review for 21st December 2018

AUSCERT Week in Review for 21st December 2018 Greetings, That’s a wrap for this year! Reminder that some of AUSCERT’s services will be in hibernation mode from today until they resume on the 2nd of January. For any urgent needs the 24/7 hotlines will continue as always. In a dramatic end to the year, the US DoJ announced indictments against two Chinese nationals accused of being members of APT10. This was in relation to intellectual property theft, particularly as part of the Cloud Hopper campaign, targeting MSPs (managed service providers). In additional state-sponsored attack news, Twitter has reported that it was the victim of an attack targeting its support platform. It allowed a user’s phone number and country of origin to be uncovered, fueling speculation it was designed to unmask dissident accounts. Microsoft has also issued an out of band patch for Internet Explorer, so be sure to get your patching in before the holidays! Here’s a summary (including excerpts) of some of the more interesting stories we’ve seen this week: US charges Chinese citizens for espionage in major hacking campaign targeting navy, NASA, others21 DecemberAuthor: ABC NewsExcerpt: “US officials have charged two Chinese citizens they allege carried out an extensive hacking campaign to steal data from military service members, government agencies and private companies in the United States and nearly a dozen other countries. The US Justice Department said Zhu Hua and Zhang Jianguo, acting on behalf of Beijing’s main intelligence agency, were involved in computer hacking attacks on the US Navy, NASA and the Energy Department as well as companies in numerous sectors.” —— Twitter discloses suspected state-sponsored attack18 DecemberAuthor: Catalin CimpanuExcerpt: “Social networking site Twitter announced today another data leak that occurred on its platform, which the company said it is investigating as a suspected state-sponsored attack. In a support page published earlier today, Twitter said that it detected the attack on November 15 when it “observed a large number of inquiries coming from individual IP addresses located in China and Saudi Arabia.”” —— On the first day of Christmas, Microsoft gave to me… an emergency out-of-band security patch for IE19 DecemberAuthor: Chris WilliamsExcerpt: “Microsoft today emitted an emergency security patch for a flaw in Internet Explorer that hackers are exploiting in the wild to hijack computers. The vulnerability, CVE-2018-8653, is a remote-code execution hole in the browser’s scripting engine. Visiting a malicious website abusing this bug with a vulnerable version of IE is enough to be potentially infected by spyware, ransomware or some other software nasty. Thus, check Microsoft Update and install any available patches as soon as you can.” —— Save the Children Hit by $1m BEC Scam17 DecemberAuthor: Phil MuncasterExcerpt: “A leading children’s charity was conned into sending $1m to a fraudster’s bank account this year, in another example of the dangers of Business Email Compromise (BEC). Save the Children Federation, the US outpost of the world-famous British non-profit, revealed the incident in a recent filing with the IRS, according to the Boston Globe. The attacker managed to access an employee’s email account and from there sent fake invoices and other documents designed to trick the organization into sending the money.” —— Here are this week’s noteworthy security bulletins: 1) ASB-2018.0310 – ALERT [Win] Internet Explorer: Execute arbitrary code/commands – Remote with user interaction Vulnerability in the scripting engine allowed malicious pages to execute code when viewed in IE. 2) ESB-2018.3702.3 – UPDATE ALERT [Cisco] Cisco Prime License Manager: Execute arbitrary code/commands – Remote/unauthenticated Cisco has released an update that fixes a regression in the previous patch release. 3) ESB-2018.3880 – [Linux][SUSE] amanda: Root compromise – Existing account Root compromise in AMANDA, a networked backup service. Stay safe, stay patched and have a good break (if you’re so lucky)! We’ll see you in the new year! Tim

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Week in review

AUSCERT Week in Review for 14th December 2018

AUSCERT Week in Review for 14th December 2018 Greetings, Extortion spammers have stepped up their game, with reports coming in of fake bomb threats. Microsoft have caused some brouhaha with an unauthenticated administrator compromise in their DNS Server product. And ATO scam calls have increased in both prevalence and prominence, making the front page of ABC News today. The Super Micro story originally broken by Bloomberg has had minimal follow-up, with outright rejections from Apple and IBM. Now, an external security audit of Super Micro has found no evidence. AUSCERT will be closed over the Christmas break. However, for urgent queries and incident assistance, please call the member hotline, which is 24/7/365. The number is available once you’re logged in on the “Contact” page of auscert.org.au – consider including it in your incident response plan! Without further ado, the news: Quick-thinking retail worker saves Tasmanian woman from losing thousands in tax scamDate: 14 December 2018Author: ABC Newshttps://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-14/woman-avoids-scam-with-help-from-tasmanian-retail-worker/10614324A Tasmanian woman who narrowly escaped falling prey to a scammer pretending to be from the Australian Tax Office (ATO) has a quick-thinking retail employee to thank. What saved her from going through with the scammer’s demands was Alistair — a customer service employee who noticed she was buying a lot of gift cards, and pointed Ms Carey to a document from the ACCC warning of this very scam. The store refunded all the cards on the spot and she did not lose any money. Spammed Bomb Threat Hoax Demands BitcoinDate: 13 December 2018Author: Brian Krebshttps://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/12/spammed-bomb-threat-hoax-demands-bitcoin/A new email extortion scam is making the rounds, threatening that someone has planted bombs within the recipient’s building that will be detonated unless a hefty bitcoin ransom is paid by the end of the business day. I could see this spam campaign being extremely disruptive in the short run. There is little doubt that some businesses receiving this extortion email will treat it as a credible threat. This is exactly what happened today at one of the banks that forwarded me their copy of this email. Also, KrebsOnSecurity has received reports that numerous school districts across the country have closed schools early today in response to this hoax email threat. Windows DNS Server Privilege Escalation Vulnerability (CVE-2018-8626)Date: 14 December 2018Author: AUSCERTURL: https://wordpress-admin.auscert.org.au/blog/2018-12-14-windows-dns-server-privilege-escalation-vulnerability-cve-2018-8626-leading-remote-code-execution-has-publicly-available-poc-exploitExcerpt: Although the NVD CVSS3 vector above indicates a proof of concept exploit exists for this vulnerability, AUSCERT has not been able to access it or find any threat indicators related to it. We will continue to update this blog as more information becomes available. Super Micro says external security audit found no evidence of backdoor chipsDate: 11 December 2018Author: ZDNethttps://www.zdnet.com/article/super-micro-says-external-security-audit-found-no-evidence-of-backdoor-chips/Excerpt: In a letter sent out today to its customers, hardware vendor Super Micro Computer said that a security audit performed by a third-party investigations firm found no evidence that Supermicro server motherboards contained any type of backdoor chip. The company sent out this letter after earlier this year a Bloomberg report claimed that some Supermicro motherboards contained a malicious chip implant inserted on its Chinese assembly lines by Chinese spies. The US news outlet then claimed that some of these servers made it into the networks of government agencies and private companies, such as Apple and Amazon’s AWS. ASD chief insists new encryption laws won’t see Aussie tech shunned like HuaweiDate: 12 December 2018Author: iTnewshttps://www.itnews.com.au/news/asd-chief-insists-new-encryption-laws-wont-see-aussie-tech-shunned-like-huawei-516830Excerpt: The Australian Signals Directorate says the idea that Australian technology will be seen as untrustworthy in the wake of encryption-busting laws and therefore blocked from use “is absurd”. Director-general Mike Burgess published what he called seven “myths” of the controversial new laws, which the major parties passed in the last hours of parliament last week. In particular, Burgess targeted the significant doubt that has been swirling in the days since around how Australia’s technology sector will now be treated by foreign buyers. This week’s noteworthy bulletins: 1. ASB-2018.0303 – [Win] Microsoft Windows: Multiple vulnerabilitieshttps://portal.auscert.org.au/bulletins/72974 Remote-code-execution vulnerability in Microsoft DNS Server. 2. ASB-2018.0308 – [Win][UNIX/Linux] BIND: Multiple vulnerabilitieshttps://portal.auscert.org.au/bulletins/73110 Unrelated vulnerabilities in BIND. 3. ASB-2018.0304 – [Win][UNIX/Linux][BSD] Mozilla Firefox: Multiple vulnerabilitieshttps://portal.auscert.org.au/bulletins/72978 Firefox 64 has been released, with some significant security updates. 4. ESB-2018.3839 – [Win][UNIX/Linux] phpMyAdmin: Multiple vulnerabilitieshttps://portal.auscert.org.au/bulletins/72986 Security updates for current versions of phpMyAdmin including XSS and authenticated unauthorised file access. Stay safe, stay patched and have a great weekend, David

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Week in review

AUSCERT Week in Review for 7th December 2018

AUSCERT Week in Review for 7th December 2018 Greetings, The word on everybody’s lips today is #aabill. With the hasty passage yesterday of the Assistance & Access Act 2018, Australia has extended the reach of its law-enforcement groups. They will shortly be able to serve notices to access protected data. The extent of the powers is not yet fully understood, and terms such as “systemic weakness” will likely require judicial interpretation. What impact will this have on your business? We’ll just have to wait and see. After the jump, some news articles. Australia gets world-first encryption busting lawshttps://www.itnews.com.au/news/australia-gets-world-first-encryption-busting-laws-516601Author: iTnewsPublished: December 6 2018 Australia’s law enforcement agencies have a wide range of new encryption-busting powers after Labor dropped all opposition to a highly contentious bill and let it pass without extra changes it claimed all day were needed. The bill passed into law by 44 votes to 12 in the senate, having already cleared the lower house where just two MPs voted against it. Assistance and Access Bill 2018: Explanatory Documenthttps://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/how-to-engage-us-subsite/files/assistance-access-bill-2018/explanatory-document.pdfAuthor: Department of Home AffairsPublished: August 2018 This explanatory document accompanies the exposure draft of the Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment (Assistance and Access) Bill 2018 (the Bill). The Bill provides national security and law enforcement agencies with powers to respond to the challenges posed by the increasing use of encrypted communications and devices. The proposed changes are designed to help agencies access intelligible communications through a range of measures, including improved computer access warrants and enhanced obligations for industry to assist agencies in prescribed circumstances. This includes accessing communications at points where it is not encrypted. The safeguards and limitations in the Bill will ensure that communications providers cannot be compelled to build systemic weaknesses or vulnerabilities into their products that undermine the security of communications. Providers cannot be required to hand over telecommunications content and data. ‘Outlandish’ encryption laws leave Australian tech industry angry and confusedhttps://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2018-12-07/encryption-bill-australian-technology-industry-fuming-mad/10589962Author: ABC NewsPublished: December 7 2018 The situation has left Australian technology companies struggling to understand the potential impact on their global standing and bottom line. John Stanton, chief executive of the Communications Alliance, said the bill’s passing was a “magnificent triumph of politics over policy”. Partner at M8 Ventures Alan Jones argued the bill will have unintended consequence for the security reputation of Australian businesses — “crippling” attempts to export their technology. “It could be just enough to lose a deal to a competitor in Israel and the US,” he said. Adobe releases out-of-band security update for newly-discovered Flash zero-dayhttps://www.zdnet.com/article/adobe-releases-out-of-band-security-update-for-newly-discovered-flash-zero-day/Author: ZDNetPublished: December 5 2018 Adobe released patches today for a new zero-day vulnerability discovered in the company’s popular Flash Player app. The zero-day has been spotted embedded inside malicious Microsoft Office documents. These documents were discovered last month after they’ve been uploaded on VirusTotal, a web-based file scanning service, from a Ukrainian IP address. A Breach, or Just a Forced Password Reset?https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/12/a-breach-or-just-a-forced-password-reset/Author: Brian KrebsPublished: December 4 2018 Software giant Citrix Systems recently forced a password reset for many users of its Sharefile content collaboration service, warning it would be doing this on a regular basis in response to password-guessing attacks that target people who re-use passwords across multiple Web sites. Many Sharefile users interpreted this as a breach at Citrix and/or Sharefile, but the company maintains that’s not the case. Warning about tax scamshttps://www.scamwatch.gov.au/news/warning-about-tax-scamsAuthor: ACCC ScamwatchPublished: December 4 2018 Tax scams seem to be everywhere at the moment and Scamwatch is warning people not to engage with phone calls or emails they receive threatening arrest or jail over unpaid tax debts. Reports of these scams have jumped significantly during the past month. The scam is timed to coincide with the cut-off date for people needing to have their tax returns submitted to the Australian Tax Office. Most of these scams occur over the phone. People get a call from an aggressive scammer directly or receive a robotic-sounding voice message informing them they need to contact a phone number in relation to an outstanding tax debt, or face imminent arrest and jail time. Buying a new devicehttps://www.cert.govt.nz/businesses-and-individuals/guides/stepping-up-your-cyber-security/buying-a-new-deviceAuthor: CERT-NZ Get our tips to help you stay secure when you’re thinking of buying a new device. Here are this week’s noteworthy security bulletins: 1. ESB-2018.3747 – ALERT [RedHat] Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform & Kubernetes: Multiple vulnerabilitieshttps://portal.auscert.org.au/bulletins/72578 Nasty privilege escalation/hijacking vulnerability in Kubernetes with a CVSSv3 score of 9.8 out of 10. 2. ESB-2018.3766 – [Apple iOS] iOS: Multiple vulnerabilitieshttps://portal.auscert.org.au/bulletins/72658 Apple’s monthly patches include multiple vulnerabilities in WebKit (used widely) and some significant vulnerabilities in iOS. 3. ASB-2018.0296 – [Win][UNIX/Linux] Google Chrome: Multiple vulnerabilitieshttps://portal.auscert.org.au/bulletins/72650 The release of Chrome 71 includes some fixes for significant vulnerabilities, including RCE from a web page. 4. ESB-2018.3702 – ALERT [Cisco] Cisco Prime License Manager: Execute arbitrary code/commands – Remote/unauthenticatedhttps://portal.auscert.org.au/bulletins/72390 Cisco cleaning up SQL injection in another product. Stay safe, stay patched, and may you not be served with a technical capability notice, David and the team at AUSCERT

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Week in review

AUSCERT Week in Review for 30th November 2018

AUSCERT Week in Review for 30th November 2018 AUSCERT Week in Review30 November 2018 Greetings, Happy computer security day! Established in 1988, computer security day is celebrated on Nov 30th each year to raise awareness for computer security issues. Here are some ways you can celebrate too: – Make sure everything is patched and up to date– Help a friend set up a password manager and change their email password– Encourage a relative to enable 2FA on their email or online banking– Test your backups!– Ensure your home WiFi has a nice long and unique password Here’s a summary (including excerpts) of some of the more interesting stories we’ve seen this week: ATO may get direct telco metadata and bank data accessDate Published: 26 Nov 2018https://www.itnews.com.au/news/ato-may-get-direct-telco-metadata-and-bank-data-access-516050Author: Ry CrozierExcerpt:“The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) could be allowed to directly access telecommunications metadata and other records such as those held by banks under a proposal aired by Treasury late last week.” —– LinkedIn violated data protection by using 18M email addresses of non-members to buy targeted ads on FacebookDate Published: 26 Nov 2018https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/24/linkedin-ireland-data-protection/Author: Ingrid LundenExcerpt:“The DPC found that LinkedIn in the US had obtained emails for 18 million people who were not already members of the social network, and then used these in a hashed form for targeted advertisements on the Facebook platform, “with the absence of instruction from the data controller” — that is, LinkedIn Ireland — “as is required.” “—– Check your repos… Crypto-coin-stealing code sneaks into fairly popular NPM lib (2m downloads per week)Date Published: 26 Nov 2018https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/11/26/npm_repo_bitcoin_stealer/Author: Thomas ClaburnExcerpt:“A widely used Node.js code library listed in NPM’s warehouse of repositories was altered to include crypto-coin-stealing malware. The lib in question, event-stream, is downloaded roughly two million times a week by application programmers. This vandalism is a stark reminder of the dangers of relying on deep and complex webs of dependencies in software: unless precautions are taken throughout the whole chain, any one component can be modified to break an app’s security. “—– Half of all Phishing Sites Now Have the PadlockDate Published: 26 Nov 2018https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/11/half-of-all-phishing-sites-now-have-the-padlock/Author: Brian KrebsExcerpt:“Recent data from anti-phishing company PhishLabs shows that 49 percent of all phishing sites in the third quarter of 2018 bore the padlock security icon next to the phishing site domain name as displayed in a browser address bar. That’s up from 25 percent just one year ago, and from 35 percent in the second quarter of 2018. This alarming shift is notable because a majority of Internet users have taken the age-old “look for the lock” advice to heart, and still associate the lock icon with legitimate sites. A PhishLabs survey conducted last year found more than 80% of respondents believed the green lock indicated a website was either legitimate and/or safe.”—– Potentially disastrous Rowhammer bitflips can bypass ECC protections Date Published: 22 Nov 2018https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/11/potentially-disastrous-rowhammer-bitflips-can-bypass-ecc-protections/Author: Dan GoodinExcerpt:“In early 2015, researchers unveiled Rowhammer, a cutting-edge hack that exploits unfixable physical weaknesses in the silicon of certain types of memory chips to transform data they stored. In the 42 months that have passed since then, an enhancement known as error-correcting code (or ECC) available in higher-end chips was believed to be an absolute defense against potentially disastrous bitflips that changed 0s to 1s and vice versa. Research published Wednesday has now shattered that assumption.” —– Here are this week’s noteworthy security bulletins: ESB-2018.3699 – [Win] Sennheiser HeadSetup and HeadSetup Pro: Provide misleading information – Remote/unauthenticatedhttps://portal.auscert.org.au/bulletins/72378 Two inadvertently disclosed digital certificates could be used to spoof content and to provide an update to the Certificate Trust List (CTL) to remove user-mode trust for the certificates. ESB-2018.3702 – ALERT [Cisco] Cisco Prime License Manager: Execute arbitrary code/commands – Remote/unauthenticatedhttps://portal.auscert.org.au/bulletins/72390 A vulnerability in the web framework code of Cisco Prime License Manager(PLM) could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to execute arbitrarySQL queries. ESB-2018.3688 – [Win][UNIX/Linux][Debian] ghostscript: Multiple vulnerabilitieshttps://portal.auscert.org.au/bulletins/72334 Several vulnerabilities were discovered in Ghostscript, the GPLPostScript/PDF interpreter, which may result in denial of service or theexecution of arbitrary code if a malformed Postscript file is processed. ESB-2018.3652 – [Win][UNIX/Linux][Debian] gnuplot5: Execute arbitrary code/commands – Existing account https://portal.auscert.org.au/bulletins/72190 gnuplot5, a command-line driven interactive plotting program, has been examined with fuzzing by Tim Blazytko, Cornelius Aschermann, Sergej Schumilo and Nils Bars.They found various overflow cases which might lead to the execution of arbitrary code. ESB-2018.3650 – [UNIX/Linux][Debian] roundcube: Cross-site scripting – Remote with user interactionhttps://portal.auscert.org.au/bulletins/72182 Roundcube, a skinnable AJAX based webmail solution for IMAP servers, is prone to a cross-site scripting vulnerability in handling invalid style tag content. Stay safe, stay patched and have a good weekend! Charelle  

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