Publications

AUSCERT Week in Review for 14th May 2021 Greetings, What a week! (although it certainly feels like we’ve been saying this a bit in 2021) To kick things off, we celebrated the 20th anniversary of our annual conference AUSCERT2021. It’s been a week of awesome catch-ups and learnings from the various presentation sessions on the conference program. Thank you so much for the support of our wonderful sponsors and delegates. We hope you enjoyed coming back together in-person as much as the AUSCERT team did. For those who couldn’t make it, we will be sharing the content from the conference in due time via our YouTube channel. We hope folks were able to get through all of May 2021’s Patch Tuesday fixes, please refer to our highlighted bulletins and articles below. Thrilled to announce that we’ve now officially launched our AUSCERT podcast, “Share today, save tomorrow” – a special shout out to our ex colleague Nick Soysa for coining this phrase. Episode 1 now available on our website here. Last but not least, thank you for supporting AUSCERT taking over the @WeAreBrisbane Twitter account this week, we hope that was an educational one for those who play in the Twitter space. Until next week everyone, have a wonderful weekend – to our colleagues and followers of Muslim faith, Happy Eid ul Fitr, Eid Mubarak! Microsoft’s May 2021 Patch Tuesday: 55 flaws fixed, four critical Date: 2021-05-11 Author: ZDNet Microsoft’s May Patch Tuesday dump included patches for 55 CVEs with four rated critical. There were also three zero-day bugs but none have been exploited. Products impacted includes Internet Explorer, .NET Core and Visual Studio, Windows 10 and Office to name a few. You can find the updates for May here. The fixed zero day bugs include: – CVE-2021-31204 .NET and Visual Studio Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability – CVE-2021-31207 Microsoft Exchange Server Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability – CVE-2021-31200 Common Utilities Remote Code Execution Vulnerability Hackers Leverage Adobe Zero-Day Bug Impacting Acrobat Reader Date: 2021-05-11 Author: Threatpost A patch for Adobe Acrobat, the world’s leading PDF reader, fixes a vulnerability under active attack affecting both Windows and macOS systems that could lead to arbitrary code execution. Adobe is warning customers of a critical zero-day bug actively exploited in the wild that affects its ubiquitous Adobe Acrobat PDF reader software. A patch is available, as part of the company’s Tuesday roundup of 43 fixes for 12 of its products, including Adobe Creative Cloud Desktop Application, Illustrator, InDesign, and Magento. Attackers added thousands of Tor exit nodes to carry out SSL stripping attacks Date: 2021-05-10 Author: Security Affairs Starting from January 2020, a threat actor has been adding thousands of malicious exit relays to the Tor network to intercept traffic and carry out SSL stripping attacks on users while accessing mixing websites, The Record first reported. SSL Stripping (aka SSL Downgrade Attack) allows downgrading connection from secure HTTPS to HTTP which could expose the traffic to eavesdropping and data manipulation. In the case of the attacks against the Tor network, threat actors aimed at replacing the addresses of legitimate wallets with the ones under the control of the attackers to hijack transactions. In August 2020, the security researcher and Tor node operator “Nusenu” described this practice in an analysis on how malicious Tor Relays are exploiting users in 2020. Nusenu has published a new part of its research that reveals that threat actor are still active. US and Australia warn of escalating Avaddon ransomware attacks Date: 2021-05-10 Author: Bleeping Computer The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Australian Cyber Security Centre are warning of an ongoing Avaddon ransomware campaign targeting organizations from an extensive array of sectors in the US and worldwide. The FBI said in a TLP:GREEN flash alert last week that Avaddon ransomware affiliates are trying to breach the networks of manufacturing, healthcare, and other private sector organizations around the world. The ACSC expanded on the targeting information, saying that the ransomware gang’s affiliates are targeting entities from a wide range of sectors, including but not limited to government, finance, law enforcement, energy, information technology, and health. A Closer Look at the DarkSide Ransomware Gang Date: 2021-05-11 Author: Krebs on Security The FBI confirmed this week that a relatively new ransomware group known as DarkSide is responsible for an attack that caused Colonial Pipeline to shut down 5,550 miles of pipe, stranding countless barrels of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel on the Gulf Coast. Here’s a closer look at the DarkSide cybercrime gang, as seen through their negotiations with a recent U.S. victim that earns $15 billion in annual revenue. New York City-based cyber intelligence firm Flashpoint said its analysts assess with a moderate-strong degree of confidence that the attack was not intended to damage national infrastructure and was simply associated with a target which had the finances to support a large payment. “This would be consistent with DarkSide’s earlier activities, which included several ‘big game hunting’ attacks, whereby attackers target an organization that likely possesses the financial means to pay the ransom demanded by the attackers,” Flashpoint observed. The DarkSide of the Ransomware Pipeline Date: 2021-05-11 Author: Splunk If you want to quickly find out how to use Splunk to find activity related to the DarkSide Ransomware, skip to the “Detection and Remediation of DarkSide” section. Otherwise, read on for a quick breakdown of what happened to the Colonial Pipeline, how to detect the ransomware, and view MITRE ATT&CK mappings. ESB-2021.1611 – ALERT Adobe Acrobat & Adobe Reader: Multiple vulnerabilities Adobe reports that CVE-2021-28550 has been exploited in the wild that could lead to arbitrary code execution. ASB-2021.0101 – ALERT exim: Multiple vulnerabilities Serious vulnerabilities identified in the Exim mail server allowing remote attackers to gain complete root privileges. ASB-2021.0110 – ALERT Microsoft Extended Security Update products Microsoft releases its monthly security patch update for the month of May 2021 resolving 12 vulnerabilities. ESB-2021.1644 – ALERT libgetdata: Multiple vulnerabilities Multiple vulnerabilities in libgetdata are addressed by Debian’s security updates. ASB-2021.0108 – Microsoft Developer Tools : Multiple vulnerabilities Latest security patches for Microsoft fix multiple vulnerabilities in Developer Tools. Stay safe, stay patched and have a good weekend! The AUSCERT team

AUSCERT Week in Review for 7th May 2021 Greetings, This week, we’ve been elated to announce a couple of well-known speakers joining us at AUSCERT2021. Troy Hunt will be doing an AMA session, hosted by MC Adam Spencer; and Kevin Mitnick will be joining us for the Speed Debate session. A note to remind folks that in-person places for AUSCERT2021 are selling fast, with very limited numbers remaining. The conference will be delivered in hybrid mode so you can still join us from the comfort of your own home/office. Don’t forget to register before we sell out! Another busy week has gone past for our analyst team with alerts sent out for multiple products. On that note, be sure to review our highlighted security bulletins and articles below. Members, remember to keep your organisation’s IPs and domains up to date on the AUSCERT member portal. This week saw us supporting Privacy Awareness Week 2021, some really handy tips from the OAIC on the topics of protecting personal information, both at home and in the workplace. On that note, at AUSCERT, we also offer a short course training session on the topic of “Practising good cyber hygiene for hybrid working” – to find out more, email us via training@auscert.org.au. Last but not least, AUSCERT will be taking over the @WeAreBrisbane Twitter account over the period of 10th-16th May (during conference week, we’re very excited!). We hope to highlight and amplify the topics of Internet safety, cyber and information security as well as the various personal work of sector focussed colleagues in the greater Brisbane area. Don’t forget to follow and re-Tweet our posts during this period. Until next week everyone, have a good and restful weekend, and please remember to spoil your mums and mother figures on Sunday 9th May. Apple hurries out fixes for WebKit zero-days Date: 2021-05-03 Author: Search Security Apple dropped updates on Monday for iOS, macOS, and watchOS in response to in-the-wild attacks on its WebKit browser engine. The macOS Big Sur 11.3.1, iOS/iPadOS 14.5.1, and iOS 12.5.3 each include fixes for CVE-2021-30665 and CVE-2021-30663. Both flaws are present in WebKit, the engine Apple uses as the basis for its Safari desktop browser and multiple components of iOS. Critical 21Nails Exim bugs expose millions of servers to attacks Date: 2021-05-04 Author: Bleeping Computer Newly discovered critical vulnerabilities in the Exim mail transfer agent (MTA) software allow unauthenticated remote attackers to execute arbitrary code and gain root privilege on mail servers with default or common configurations. The security flaws (10 remotely exploitable and 11 locally) found and reported by the Qualys Research Team are collectively known a 21Nails. Exim 4.94.2 are vulnerable to attacks attempting to exploit the 21Nails vulnerabilities. “Some of the vulnerabilities can be chained together to obtain a full remote unauthenticated code execution and gain root privileges on the Exim Server,” as Qualys senior Manager Bharat Jogi noted. UnitingCare cyber attack claimed by notorious ransom gang REvil/Sodin Date: 2021-05-06 Author: ABC News Hackers claiming responsibility for an attack on health and community care provider UnitingCare Queensland have been revealed as one of the most notorious cyber ransom gangs in the world. Last week, the Queensland healthcare provider fell victim to the cyber attack, which affected its hospitals and aged care homes. It runs the Wesley and St Andrew’s Hospitals in Brisbane, St Stephen’s Hospital in Hervey Bay and the Buderim Private Hospital on the Sunshine Coast, and dozens of aged care and disability services throughout the state. UnitingCare on Wednesday confirmed the hack had been claimed by REvil/Sodin. The gang that has been linked to multiple attacks on high-profile targets across the globe and is thought to have named itself after apocalyptic science fiction horror video game-turned movie, Resident Evil. UnitingCare Queensland’s corporate affairs director Matthew Cuming said as a result, some of the organisation’s digital and technology systems had been left inaccessible. But Mr Cuming said at this time there was no evidence the health and safety of patients, residents or clients had been compromised as a result of the cyber incident. NSW Labor takes a hit from Windows Avaddon ransomware Date: 2021-05-05 Author: iTWire The NSW branch of the Labor Party appears to have suffered a Windows ransomware attack, with the Avaddon strain having been used to attack the party’s network. Cybersecurity is too big for governments or firms to handle alone Date: 2021-05-03 Author: World Economic Forum The recent hack of network management company SolarWinds, which enabled bad actors to compromise a range of US government agencies and major corporations, has revealed a troubling truth: Business and government expose each other to significant cyber-risks because they are interconnected and rely on the same network of software vendors. That’s why the strategic response must involve more intense collaboration. Simply put, the threat of cyberattacks is too big a job for either government or business to tackle alone. • Business and government are exposing each other to an increasing range of cyber-risks. • Current efforts to pool cybersecurity resources are limited in scope. • Sharing threat intelligence is the first step to provide a clear cyberthreat picture. ESB-2021.1499 – ALERT Apple iOS products: Execute arbitrary code/commands – Remote with user interaction Apple reveals two iOS zero-day vulnerabilities that allow attackers to access fully patched devices. ASB-2021.0101 – ALERT exim: Multiple vulnerabilities Qualys researchers uncover 21 bugs in Exim mail servers. ESB-2021.1528 – ALERT HyperFlex HX Software: Multiple vulnerabilities Multiple vulnerabilities in Cisco HyperFlex could allow arbitrary code execution. ESB-2021.1529 – ALERT Cisco SD-WAN vManage: Multiple vulnerabilities Cisco released patches to address critical vulnerabilities in SD-WAN vManage software. ESB-2021.1563 – ALERT vRealize Business for Cloud: Execute arbitrary code/commands – Remote/unauthenticated VMWare addresses critical remote code execution vulnerability in vRealize Business for Cloud. Stay safe, stay patched and have a good weekend! The AUSCERT team

AUSCERT Week in Review for 30th April 2021 Greetings, This week, we’re thrilled to announce the opening keynote at AUSCERT2021! To celebrate the return of in-person events, we will kick off the 20th anniversary of our conference with a panel discussion on how SOAR can help with your security transformation strategy. The panel will feature experts from Splunk (James Young), Microsoft (Jess Dodson), Bugcrowd (Casey Ellis) and Airservices Australia (Anthony Kitzelmann). Places selling fast, the conference will be delivered in hybrid mode so you can still join us from the comfort of your own home/office. Don’t forget to register before we sell out! Another busy week has gone past for our analyst team with alerts sent out for multiple products. On that note, be sure to review our highlighted security bulletins and articles below. Members, please keep an eye out for a copy of our membership newsletter The Feed which landed in your inbox on Tuesday this week. It was a bumper edition, on it we shared a copy of our Quarter 1, 2021 report and a piece on how we tackled the recent Microsoft Exchange server critical ProxyLogon vulnerabilities and exploits and helped our members – the latter was also covered in Edition 2 of the Women in Security magazine, a publication from team Source2Create. Next week will see us supporting Privacy Awareness Week 2021, follow us on our social media channels for information around this year’s campaign. Last but not least, thank you to those who joined us yesterday as we discussed the 2020 BDO and AUSCERT Cyber Security Survey insights. A copy of the webinar recording can be found here. AUSCERT will maintain minimal coverage for Labour Day long weekend in Queensland. Our staff will be on-call for emergencies only and email will not be monitored during this time. Any AUSCERT member with an emergency may contact on-call AUSCERT staff on the AUSCERT Incident Hotline, details available here. Until next week everyone, have a good and restful weekend. UnitingCare Queensland hit by cyber attack Date: 2021-04-26 Author: iTnews UnitingCare Queensland, a provider of hospital and aged care services, said some of its digital and technology systems were rendered “inaccessible” by a cyber attack on Sunday. 9News in Queensland reported the attack as a ransomware infection that all hospitals and aged care homes run by the organisation with IT systems. Hospitals run by UnitingCare Queensland include The Wesley Hospital and St Andrews War Memorial Hospital, both in Brisbane, St Stephen’s Hospital in Hervey Bay, and Buderim Private Hospital on the Sunshine Coast. A software bug let malware bypass macOS’ security defenses Date: 2021-04-27 Author: TechCrunch Apple has spent years reinforcing macOS with new security features to make it tougher for malware to break in. But a newly discovered vulnerability broke through most of macOS’ newer security protections with a double-click of a malicious app, a feat not meant to be allowed under Apple’s watch. Worse, evidence shows a notorious family of Mac malware had been exploiting this vulnerability for months before it was subsequently patched by Apple this week. Ransomware gang targets Microsoft SharePoint servers for the first time Date: 2021-04-27 Author: The Record by Recorded Future Microsoft SharePoint servers have now joined the list of network devices being abused as an entry vector into corporate networks by ransomware gangs. SharePoint now joins a list that also includes Citrix gateways, F5 BIG-IP load balancers, Microsoft Exchange email servers, and Pulse Secure, Fortinet, and Palo Alto Network VPNs. The group behind the attacks targeting SharePoint servers is a new ransomware operation that was first seen at the end of 2020. The group is tracked by security vendors under the codenames of Hello or the WickrMe ransomware—because of its use of Wickr encrypted instant messaging accounts as a way for victims to reach out and negotiate the ransom fee. Typical Hello/WickrMe attacks usually involve the use of a publicly known exploit for CVE-2019-0604, a well-known vulnerability in Microsoft’s SharePoint team collaboration servers. Data From The Emotet Malware is Now Searchable in Have I Been Pwned, Courtesy of the FBI and NHTCU Date: 2021-04-27 Author: Troy Hunt Earlier this year, the FBI in partnership with the Dutch National High Technical Crimes Unit (NHTCU), German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) and other international law enforcement agencies brought down what Europol rereferred to as the world’s most dangerous malware: Emotet. This strain of malware dates back as far as 2014 and it became a gateway into infected machines for other strains of malware ranging from banking trojans to credential stealers to ransomware. Emotet was extremely destructive and wreaked havoc across the globe before eventually being brought to a halt in February. University of Minnesota responds to Linux security patch requests Date: 2021-04-27 Author: ZDNet The UMN wants to make peace with the Linux kernel developer community after an annoying Linux code security research blunder. ESB-2021.1408.2 – UPDATED ALERT Apple iOS products: Multiple vulnerabilities The bug is under active exploitation by unknown attackers and affects a wide range of devices, including iPhones, iPads and Apple Watches. ESB-2021.1416 – ALERT macOS Catalina: Multiple vulnerabilities Apple has released security patches for multiple vulnerabilities including a zero day bypass vulnerabilty. ESB-2021.1439 – ALERT FortiWAN: Multiple vulnerabilities FortiGuard has released security update to patch authentication bypass vulnerability. ESB-2021.1440 – ALERT ShareFile: Root compromise – Remote/unauthenticated A security issue in Citrix ShareFile could allow a remote attacker to compromise the storage zones controller. ASB-2021.0100 – Microsoft Edge: Multiple vulnerabilities Microsoft has released security update to address multiple vulnerabilities in Microsoft Edge. Stay safe, stay patched and have a good weekend! The AUSCERT team

AUSCERT Week in Review for 23rd April 2021 Greetings, Another busy week has gone past for the folks in our sector, with Oracle’s quarterly patch releases, two separate notable announcements from FireEye, an exploited Chrome zero-day and two vulnerabilities in the QNAP NAS products for good measure! On that note, be sure to review our highlighted security bulletins and articles below. Thank you to those who’ve registered to attend the AUSCERT2021 conference with your organisation’s member tokens, part of your AUSCERT membership perks which allows you to attend our annual conference for free or as a partially subsidised delegate. Not long to go until we kick things off in mid-May! Members, keep an eye out for a copy of our membership newsletter The Feed landing in your inbox early next week. It will be a bumper edition in the lead up to AUSCERT2021. Last but not least, please come and join us on our next webinar session, Thursday 29th April at 10:00AM AEST with colleagues from BDO Australia as we discuss the 2020 BDO and AUSCERT Cyber Security Survey insights. Details on how to register for this session can be found here. Lest we forget, we would like to take this opportunity to commemorate the men and women who have served our nation in all wars, conflicts, and peacekeeping operations. AUSCERT will maintain minimal coverage for the Anzac Day long weekend. Our staff will be on-call for emergencies only and email will not be monitored during this time. Any AUSCERT member with an emergency may contact on-call AUSCERT staff on the AUSCERT Incident Hotline, details available here. Until next week, have a good and restful weekend everyone. AirDrop bugs expose Apple users’ email addresses, phone numbers Date: 2021-04-21 Author: The Record by Recorded Future A team of academics from a German university said it discovered two vulnerabilities that can be abused to extract phone numbers and email addresses from Apple’s AirDrop file transfer feature. The two bugs reside in the authentication process during the initial phase of an AirDrop connection, where devices try to discover one another and determine if they belong to users who know each other (by checking if a device/user’s phone number is in the other device’s contacts list). Google issues Chrome update patching seven security vulnerabilities Date: 2021-04-20 Author: ZDNet [See related bulletin ESB-2021.1363] Google on Wednesday released version 90.0.4430.85 of the Chrome browser for Windows, Mac, and Linux. The release contains seven security fixes, including one for a zero-day vulnerability that was exploited in the wild. The zero-day, which was assigned the identifier of CVE-2021-21224, was described as a “type confusion in V8”. Google Alerts continues to be a hotbed of scams and malware Date: 2021-04-19 Author: Bleeping Computer Google Alerts continues to be a hotbed of scams and malware that threat actors are increasingly abusing to promote malicious websites. While Google Alerts has been abused for a long time, BleepingComputer has noticed a significant increase in activity over the past couple of weeks. To deceive Google into thinking they are legitimate sites rather than scams, threat actors use a black hat search engine optimization (SEO) technique called ‘cloaking.’ Cloaking is when a website displays different content to visitors than it does search engine spiders. This cloaking allows the website to look like a plain text or a typical blog post when Google’s search engine spiders visit the page but perform malicious redirects when a user visits the site from a Google redirect. Linux bans University of Minnesota for committing malicious code Date: 2021-04-21 Author: Bleeping Computer In a rare, groundbreaking decision, Linux kernel project maintainers have imposed a ban on the University of Minnesota (UMN) from contributing to the open-source Linux project. The move comes after a group of UMN researchers were caught submitting a series of malicious code commits, or patches that deliberately introduced security vulnerabilities in the official Linux codebase, as a part of their research activities. ASB-2021.0098 – ALERT QNAP NAS: Execute arbitrary code/commands – Remote/unauthenticated Widespread attacks on QNAP products resulting in Qlocker and eCh0raix ransomware infections. Attacks are being carried out through exploitation of vulnerabilities allowing unauthenticated takeover of Internet-facing hosts. ESB-2021.1363 – ALERT Google Chrome: Multiple vulnerabilities Chrome contained a multitude of vulnerabilties causing reduced security including remote code execution and denial of service. Google is aware of reports that exploits for CVE-2021-21224 exist in the wild. ASB-2021.0074 – ALERT MySQL Products: Multiple vulnerabilities Various MySQL products contained multiple vulnerabilities which granted attackers abilities to execute remote code, cause denial of service, and root compromise. ESB-2021.1330 – sudo: Root compromise – Existing account Any local user could exploit a flaw in sudo and cause a heap-based buffer overflow, which allowed privilege escalation to root. Stay safe, stay patched and have a good weekend! The AUSCERT team

AUSCERT Week in Review for 16th April 2021 Greetings, We hope everyone’s had a good week and were able to get through all of April 2021’s Patch Tuesday fixes. On that note, be sure to review our highlighted security bulletins below, in particular ASB-2021.0062 – these were newly announced this week and are not the previous ProxyLogon vulnerabilities. Thank you to those who tuned in to the joint AUSCERT (UQ) & Duo Security webinar which took place yesterday during which our Director, Dr. David Stockdale, discussed the focus on securing remote access as a key step in the zero-trust journey. Members – a FINAL reminder that all nominated Primary and Organisation contact person(s) would have received details regarding your organisation’s member token(s), part of your AUSCERT membership perks which allows you to attend our annual conference for free or as a partially subsidised delegate. Please make sure you utilise the token(s) by midnight on Sunday 18 April, this is your last chance to claim the token(s). Conference registrations can be completed via our website here. Ramadan Kareem to folks of the Muslim faith; until next week, have a good weekend everyone! GitLab Critical Security Release: 13.10.3, 13.9.6, and 13.8.8 Date: 2021-04-14 Author: GitLab Today we are releasing versions 13.10.3, 13.9.6, and 13.8.8 for GitLab Community Edition and Enterprise Edition. These versions contain important security fixes, and we strongly recommend that all GitLab installations be upgraded to one of these versions immediately. We have requested a CVE ID and will update this blog post when it is assigned. Zero-day vulnerability in Desktop Window Manager (CVE-2021-28310) used in the wild Date: 2021-04-13 Author: Securelist While analyzing the CVE-2021-1732 exploit originally discovered by the DBAPPSecurity Threat Intelligence Center and used by the BITTER APT group, we discovered another zero-day exploit we believe is linked to the same actor. We reported this new exploit to Microsoft in February and after confirmation that it is indeed a zero-day, it received the designation CVE-2021-28310. Microsoft released a patch to this vulnerability as a part of its April security updates. We believe this exploit is used in the wild, potentially by several threat actors. It is an escalation of privilege (EoP) exploit that is likely used together with other browser exploits to escape sandboxes or get system privileges for further access. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to capture a full chain, so we don’t know if the exploit is used with another browser zero-day, or coupled with known, patched vulnerabilities. CISA gives federal agencies until Friday to patch Exchange servers Date: 2021-04-13 Author: Bleeping Computer The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has ordered federal agencies to install newly released Microsoft Exchange security updates by Friday. Today, Microsoft released security updates for four Microsoft Exchange vulnerabilities discovered by the NSA. These Exchange vulnerabilities are capable of remote code execution, with two vulnerabilities not requiring attackers to authenticate first. While none of the vulnerabilities are known to be used in attacks, CISA believes that threat actors will reverse-engineer the patches to create working exploits due to their severity and public disclosure. LinkedIn denies 500 million user data breach Date: 2021-04-11 Author: The Record LinkedIn has formally denied a rumor that it suffered a devastating security breach that exposed the account details of more than 500 million of its registered users. Rumors of a breach appeared last week after a threat actor claimed to have been in possession of a large trove of LinkedIn user data and proceeded to leak a sample of two million user records as proof. But in a message published last week, LinkedIn said it investigated the breach and concluded that the hacker’s data only included public information that was scraped off LinkedIn’s website and which users consciously made public on their profiles. 100,000 Google Sites Used to Install SolarMarket RAT Date: 2021-04-14 Author: Threatpost Hackers are using search-engine optimization tactics to lure business users to more than 100,000 malicious Google Sites that seem legitimate, but instead install a remote access trojan (RAT), used to gain a foothold on a network and later infect systems with ransomware, credential-stealers, banking trojans and other malware. eSentire’s Threat Response Unit discovered legions of unique, malicious web pages that contain popular business terms/particular keywords, including business-form related keywords like template, invoice, receipt, questionnaire and resume, researchers observed, in a report published Wednesday. ESB-2021.1219 – Adobe Bridge: Multiple vulnerabilities Adobe has released a security update for Adobe Bridge addressing critical and important vulnerabilities that could lead to arbitrary code execution. ASB-2021.0062 – ALERT Microsoft Exchange Server Products: Execute arbitrary code/commands – Remote/unauthenticated Microsoft has released patches to fix four more security vulnerabilities for MS Exchange Server. ASB-2021.0063 – Microsoft Office Products & Services and Web App Products: Microsoft released updates to plug various security holes in its Windows Operating Systems and other products. ESB-2021.1285 – ALERT GitLab Products: Multiple vulnerabilities Gitlab released newer versions to address critical remote code execution vulnerability. ESB-2021.1287 – Google Chrome: Multiple vulnerabilities Google released Chrome 90.0.4430.72 which contains a number of security fixes and improvements. Stay safe, stay patched and have a good weekend! The AUSCERT team

AUSCERT Week in Review for 9th April 2021 Greetings, Welcome back from the Easter long weekend. This week we kicked things off by releasing a blog piece on the topic of the recent Facebook data leak of over five-hundred million of its users. We’d be remiss not to mention the good work done by the folks from Have I Been Pwned in this particular instance. Tune in next week and join our Director, Dr. David Stockdale as he discusses the focus on securing remote access as a key step in the zero-trust journey. “Securing the people, systems, and assets in a higher education org is no small task. With over fifty-thousand students supported by over seven-thousand staff members, learn why UQ chose Duo Security as its 2FA solution.” For further details on the webinar and to register, please visit the AUSCERT website here. Members – another reminder that all nominated Primary and Organisation contact person(s) would have received details regarding your organisation’s member token(s), part of your AUSCERT membership perks which allows you to attend our annual conference for free or as a partially subsidised delegate, please make sure you utilise the token(s) by midnight on Sunday 18 April! Conference registrations can be completed via our website here. Until next week, have a good weekend everyone. Cisco fixes bug allowing remote code execution with root privileges Date: 2021-04-07 Author: Bleeping Computer Cisco has released security updates to address a critical pre-authentication remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability affecting SD-WAN vManage Software’s remote management component. The critical security flaw tracked a CVE-2021-1479 which received a severity score of 9.8/10. It allows unauthenticated, remote attackers to trigger a buffer overflow on vulnerable devices in low complexity attacks that don’t require user interaction. “An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a crafted connection request to the vulnerable component that, when processed, could cause a buffer overflow condition,” Cisco explained. The company fixed two other high-severity security vulnerabilities in the user management (CVE-2021-1137) and system file transfer (CVE-2021-1480) functions of the same product allowing attackers to escalate privileges. Successful exploitation of these two bugs could allow threat actors targeting them to obtain root privileges on the underlying operating system. Scraped data of 500 million LinkedIn users being sold online, 2 million records leaked as proof Date: 2021-04-06 Author: CyberNews Days after a massive Facebook data leak made the headlines, it seems like we’re in for another one, this time involving LinkedIn. An archive containing data purportedly scraped from 500 million LinkedIn profiles has been put for sale on a popular hacker forum, with another 2 million records leaked as a proof-of-concept sample by the post author. The four leaked files contain information about the LinkedIn users whose data has been allegedly scraped by the threat actor, including their full names, email addresses, phone numbers, workplace information, and more. Too slow! Booking.com fined for not reporting data breach fast enough Date: 2021-04-06 Author: Naked Security The Dutch Data Protection Authority (DPA) – the country’s data protection regulator – has fined online travel and hotel booking company Booking.com almost half a million Euros over a data breach. Interestingly, the fine was issued not merely because there was a breach, but because the company didn’t report the breach quickly enough. Facebook data leak: How to know if your business has been affected, and what to do next Date: 2021-04-06 Author: SmartCompany The personal data of more than 533 million Facebook users has been leaked online. But, if you’re a business owner, there are a few things you can do to make sure your professional page is as safe as possible. Contact books of Australian diplomats hacked in major ‘phishing’ scam Date: 2021-04-07 Author: Sydney Morning Herald Senior Australian diplomats, including United States ambassador Arthur Sinodinos, have been caught up in a sophisticated identity theft scam in which cyber attackers impersonated them on encrypted messaging services WhatsApp and Telegram in a bid to get sensitive information from their contacts. Under the scam, senior politicians and diplomats are being sent messages asking them to validate new WhatsApp and Telegram accounts. Once they click on the link or download the app, the hacker then has access to their contact book and the ability to impersonate them on the new account. ESB-2021.1131 – VMware Carbon Black Cloud Workload appliance: Administrator compromise – Remote/unauthenticated VMWare addresses a critical vulnerability in Carbon Black Cloud. ESB-2021.1163 – ALERT Cisco SD-WAN vManage Software: Multiple vulnerabilities Multiple Vulnerabilities in Cisco SD-WAN vManage software can lead to arbitrary code execution. ESB-2021.1165 – ALERT Cisco Small Business RV Series Router products: Execute arbitrary code/commands – Remote/unauthenticated Cisco released an advisory on a critical RCE on End of Life RV Series routers. ESB-2021.1183 – Jenkins (core) and plugins: Multiple vulnerabilities Jenkins has released security updates for different Jenkins deliverables including Jenkins (core). ESB-2021.1176 – Cisco Webex Meetings: Multiple vulnerabilities Cisco addresses XSS vulnerability in Webex Meetings. Stay safe, stay patched and have a good weekend! The AUSCERT team

Easter's Facebook Revelations Initial Release 2021-04-06   Well it has made the news that Facebook had a data leak of 533 Million of its users, including 106 Countries [1].  What better time for this to be made public than on an Easter Sunday.  To avoid taking most of your time reading this blog, the spoiler is that the data seems to be data from 2019 [2] and that there seems to be no passwords leaked. Although there may be a little discrepancies at the date of when the fix could have been made effective, one party stating August 2019 [2] and another stating January 2020 [3][4] it may be a reasonable conclusion to say that the data has been out there for a while already. Now that we have a fair idea that this data has been out for a good amount of time, it would be nice to be able to find out what type of data was released.  After all, just in case that the news is now proportionately reported [3][5], and it is only now with the news articles that the security team is asked to perform some checks. So, a data breach makes an impact when data types are associated with each other. Single types of data listed out have limited effect, but an association on two data types carries more effect than the sum of two separate lists.  Also, some data pairs, when associated, have more impact than other pairs.  For example, two data type associations such as Email Address and Password, has a deeper impact than the associations of the types, Email Address and Name.  Luckily, it seems that passwords are not in the mix of the data that is said to be available from the 533M leak.  Of the 533 Million the association of information are: [4] Predominantly Account to Phone Number; Mostly includes Names and Gender; Many including Date of Birth, Location, Relationship Status and Employer; and 2.5 million records including Email Addresses. In case you have to check[ 5] your account holders if they have been part of the Facebook 533 Million data records leak, the service from HaveIBeenPwned [6] may be used. As for recommendations arising from this new old-news, there is nothing novel in the following steps: Check if the emails that you take care of are part of this breach by domain search; [7] Check if the breach is from the Facebook leaks;(time permitting follow through with other breach(s) if listed in the Domain Search report.) Check credential pairs, if listed but not in this case of 533M Facebook, are not active; Check it is understood the impact of other information associations have, yet keeping perspective that: Data association may be on other social media services, Further associations could be made on other social media services. Recommend settings to restrict searchability; [8] Advocate the usage of strong passwords, password managers and MFA use;Although not within the scope of effect of this instance of a data leak. Be aware that Phishing campaigns may increase due to this “news”. [9] Last but not least feel better that Facebook has officially discontinued API access to those fields as of 2018 [10], and in turn raise your concern should other social media API access provide these same searchability.   References:  [1] 533 million Facebook users’ phone numbers leaked on hacker forumhttps://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/533-million-facebook-users-phone-numbers-leaked-on-hacker-forum/ [2] “This is old data that was previously reported on in 2019. We found and fixed this issue in August 2019.”https://twitter.com/liz_shepherd/status/1378398417450377222 [3] “In early 2020 a vulnerability that enabled seeing the phone number linked to every Facebook account was exploited, creating a database containing the information 533m users across all countries”https://twitter.com/underthebreach/status/1349674272227266563 [4] HIBP – Facebook Dataleakhttps://haveibeenpwned.com/PwnedWebsites#Facebook [5] How to check if you’re part of the Facebook data breachhttps://www.theverge.com/22367727/facebook-data-breach-haveibeenpwned  [6] HaveIBeenPwnedhttps://haveibeenpwned.com/ [7] Domain Searchhttps://haveibeenpwned.com/DomainSearch  [8] How do I control who can look me up on Facebook using my email address or mobile phone number?https://m.facebook.com/help/131297846947406https://www.facebook.com/help/131297846947406 [9] Possible Phishing Campaigns Arising from Facebook’s Data Leakhttps://www.csa.gov.sg/singcert/advisories/ad-2021-004 [10] Facebook Graph API – Userhttps://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-api/reference/user 

AUSCERT Week in Review for 1st April 2021 Greetings, Here we are, at the end of Quarter 1 2021. What a year it’s been for our sector so far! The wave of vulnerabilities and associated attacks we’ve observed has certainly kept all of us busy. This week we saw an urgent out-of-band Apple security update for its iOS and iPadOS mobile operating system, see bulletin details below. We also witnessed Nine Media recovering from what’s been described as a “significant and complex” cyber-attack, a timely prompt to re-visit “The Essential Eight” a prioritised list of mitigation strategies issued by the ACSC. Last week, the AUSCERT team were privileged to attend our first in-person conference event in over a year – BrisSEC21, an event hosted by the AISA Brisbane chapter. Our Director, Dr David Stockdale presented a talk on the theme of cybercrime at the event. An article based on this talk will be submitted to the next edition of the Women in Security magazine and we will share it when it’s published. We look forward to our next event, our very own annual conference, AUSCERT2021. On that note, members – a reminder that all nominated Primary and Organisation contact person(s) would have received details regarding your organisation’s member token(s), part of your AUSCERT membership perks which allows you to attend our annual conference for free or as a partially subsidised delegate – please make sure you utilise the token(s) by 18 April. Conference registrations can be done via our website here. AUSCERT will maintain minimal coverage for the Easter holidays from Friday 2 April to Monday 5 April. AUSCERT staff will be on-call for emergencies only and email will not be monitored during this time. Any AUSCERT member with an emergency may contact on-call AUSCERT staff on the AUSCERT Incident Hotline, details available here. Until next week, have a good long Easter weekend everyone. Stay safe and let’s keep up with our Covid-safe practices. Apple patches exploited iOS, iPadOS zero-day Date: 2021-03-28 Author: iTnews Apple has issued an urgent out-of-band security update for its iOS and iPadOS mobile operating system, after a zero-day vulnerability that is under active exploitation was found. The vulnerability in the WebKit browser engine can lead to universal site cross-scripting, Apple said. Cross-scripting allows attackers to inject their own scripts via maliciously crafted web page content. VMware fixes bug allowing attackers to steal admin credentials Date: 2021-03-30 Author: Bleeping Computer VMware has published security updates to address a high severity vulnerability in vRealize Operations that could allow attackers to steal admin credentials after exploiting vulnerable servers. vRealize Operations is an AI-powered and “self-driving” IT operations management for private, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments, available as an on-premises or SaaS solution. Automated Clean-up of HAFNIUM Shells and Processes with Splunk Phantom Date: 2021-03-26 Author: Splunk The Splunk team have released a couple of blogs on this topic, concentrated on two things: 1. Detecting HAFNIUM Exchange Server Zero-Day Activity in Splunk: Explaining the vulnerabilities and associated exploits 2. Detecting Microsoft Exchange Vulnerabilities – 0 + 8 Days Later…: Sharing SPL to detect and hunt for malicious behavior withrelated to the exploits and detections you can use with Splunk Enterprise Security Docker Hub images downloaded 20M times come with cryptominers Date: 2021-03-29 Author: Bleeping Computer Researchers found that more than two-dozen containers on Docker Hub have been downloaded more than 20 million times for cryptojacking operations spanning at least two years. Docker Hub is the largest library of container applications, allowing companies to share images internally or with their customers, or the developer community to distribute open-source projects. Holding the news to ransom? What we know so far about the Channel 9 cyber attack Date: 2021-03-30 Author: The Conversation As is often the case in the early stages of a major cyber incident, details are scarce, and it’s very hard to know who is behind it. What happened? There is no official statement of cause, but it is clear that malware spread between devices at Channel 9’s Sydney headquarters, leaving data and production systems inaccessible. ESB-2021.1067 – ALERT Apple Products: Cross-site scripting – Remote with user interaction The bug is under active exploitation by unknown attackers and affects a wide range of devices, including iPhones, iPads and Apple Watches. ESB-2021.1082 – Cisco Products: Multiple vulnerabilities Multiple vulnerabilities on OpenSSL affecting Cisco Products. ESB-2021.1087 – VMWare Products: Multiple vulnerabilities VMware vRealize Operations updates address server side request forgery and arbitrary file write vulnerabilities. ESB-2021.1107 – Google Chrome: Multiple Vulnerabilities Google released stable channel update for Chrome addressing multiple vulnerabilities. ESB-2021.1116 – GitLab: Multiple vulnerabilities Gitlab released new versions for GitLab CE and EE to address multiple vulnerabilities. Stay safe, stay patched and have a good weekend! The AUSCERT team

AUSCERT Week in Review for 26th March 2021 Greetings, This week we released the results from our joint 2020 AUSCERT and BDO in Australia Cyber Security Survey. Thank you to all those who helped us with this endeavour! For the fifth year in a row, we surveyed member organisations across Australia and New Zealand, allowing us to clearly unpack the COVID-19 pandemic’s impacts on cyber – detailing significant shifts in the way organisations are impacted by, and responding to, evolving cyber threats. “Adaptation is key to winning the battle.” Download a copy of the report here. Also this week, the AUSCERT team conducted yet another analysis on the evolving MS Exchange ProxyLogon vulnerabilities based on a latest report from the Shadowserver team – this report (article) has been highlighted below. Those of you who’d been affected would have been contacted on Wednesday. Members, please check your inbox. This is also a timely reminder to keep your organisation’s IPs and domains up to date on the AUSCERT member portal. Members, a reminder that all nominated Primary and Organisation contact person(s) would have received details regarding your organisation’s member token(s), part of your AUSCERT membership perks which allows you to attend our annual conference for free or as a partially subsidised delegate – please utilise the token(s) by 18 April. Conference registrations can be done via our website here. Also a reminder that AUSCERT2021 has been approved to be a part of the Australian Government’s “Restarting Australia’s Business’ opportunity grant application scheme.” Applications for this grant scheme are due on Tuesday 30th March. To find out more about our sponsorship options, please visit our conference website here. Until next week, have a good weekend everyone. … RIFT: Detection capabilities for recent F5 BIG-IP/BIG-IQ iControl REST API vulnerabilities CVE-2021-22986 Date: 2021-03-18 Author: NCC Group Research On Thursday (Friday, Australian time) cybersecurity firm NCC Group said that it detected successful in the wild exploitation of a recently patched critical vulnerability in F5 BIG-IP and BIG-IQ networking devices. Shadowserver Special Report – Exchange Scanning #5 Date: 2021-03-24 Author: The Shadowserver Foundation Over the past 12 days we have published 5 one-off Special Reports that provided information about the recently patched recently patched zero-day vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange Server (CVE-2021-26855, CVE-2021-26857, CVE-2021-26858 and CVE-2021-27065). This latest Special Report represents our most comprehensive effort yet to enumerate as many vulnerable and compromised Microsoft Exchange Servers as possible. Much of the detection of potentially vulnerable Microsoft Exchange servers performed to date has been based on internet-wide scanning of all ~4 billion IPv4 addresses (IPv4 /0 scanning), which is effective at identifying Exchange/OWA environments which are configured to use the default IP address. However, this kind of mass scanning will not always identify potentially vulnerable Microsoft Exchange servers, since they can also be configured to use web server virtual hosting on fully qualified domain names (FQDNs), rather than simply binding to the default web site instance or a server’s main IP address. In such cases, it is possible that virtual host-based Microsoft Exchange Server instances may be missed during IPv4 /0 scans. Cisco addresses critical bug in Windows, macOS Jabber clients Date: 2021-03-24 Author: Bleeping Computer Cisco has addressed a critical arbitrary program execution vulnerability impacting several versions of Cisco Jabber client software for Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS. Cisco Jabber is a web conferencing and instant messaging app that allows users to send messages via the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP). The vulnerability was reported by Olav Sortland Thoresen of Watchcom. Cisco’s Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) says that the flaw is not currently exploited in the wild. Additionally, the vulnerability does not affect Cisco Jabber client software configured for Team Messaging or Phone-only modes. University of Queensland uplifts its vulnerability management Date: 2021-03-23 Author: iTnews The University of Queensland has upgraded its vulnerability management tooling as part of an ongoing security improvements program. The university said it had selected cloud-based Tenable.io to “to see, predict and act to reduce cyber risk across its domestic campuses.” Tenable.io is used to scan the university’s “complex environment made up of tens of thousands of personal devices, vendor partnerships and connections to remote teams and other institutions,” information technology services deputy director Dr David Stockdale said in a statement. Australian firms to spend $4.9b on infosec, risk management in 2021 Date: 2021-03-23 Author: iTWire Organisations in Australia are forecast to spend more than $4.9 billion on enterprise information security and risk management products and services in 2021, an increase of 8% year-on-year, the technology analyst firm Gartner says. The forecast was made during the online Gartner Security & Risk Management Summit APAC which is being held this week. Senior research director Richard Addiscott said the focus on security and risk was due to major attacks like the SolarWinds supply chain incident, proposed legislation such as the Security Legislation Amendment (Critical Infrastructure) Bill 2020 and regulatory obligations “Many of the conversations we’re having with government and private sector clients in Australia revolve around the Essential Eight, varying state government cyber security frameworks, and regulatory instruments such as APRA’s Prudential Standard CPS 234,” said Addiscott. ESB-2021.1010 – ALERT Cisco Jabber: Multiple vulnerabilities Multiple Vulnerabilities in Cisco Jabber could allow for Arbitrary Code Execution. ESB-2021.1003 – Firefox: Multiple vulnerabilities Mozilla has released Firefox 87 fixing multiple vulnerabilities including Remote Code Execution. ESB-2021.1043 – McAfee Data Loss Prevention (DLP) Endpoint for Windows: Increased privileges – Existing account McAfee released update to address privilege escalation vulnerability for Windows. ESB-2021.1056 – OpenSSL: Multiple vulnerabilities OpenSSL version 1.1.1h and newer are affected with multiple vulnerabilities. ESB-2021.1012 – sudo: Root compromise – Existing account An update that addresses one vulnerability in Sudo is now available for Suse products. Stay safe, stay patched and have a good weekend! The AUSCERT team

AUSCERT Week in Review for 19th March 2021 Greetings, Another big one for the AUSCERT team with several items we’d like to highlight from this week. We kicked things off on Monday by releasing our Year in Review 2020 piece. Members, we hope you find our review useful and we thank you for your continued support! Last week we highlighted the following “HAFNIUM special report” courtesy of the team from Shadowserver. Since then, the AUSCERT team has conducted a number of analyses based on this information and several follow-up reports from the Shadowserver team. Those of you who’d been affected by the ProxyLogon vulnerabilities would have been contacted throughout this week. Members, please check your inbox. This is also a timely reminder to keep your organisation’s IPs and domains up to date on the AUSCERT member portal. In conjunction with the above, our team also released a blog article and a work flow diagram titled “Patching for HAFNIUM is just half of the story” – link to the blog highlighted below. We strongly recommend reading this piece as it has been created by our analyst team and should assist Microsoft Exchange server caretakers to check and see where within this task-flow they are placed at within their organisation’s incident response plan. Last but not least, another exciting update with respect to AUSCERT2021, we’ve updated our Program page to now include all of our tutorials and hands-on workshop offerings. Members, please note that all nominated Primary and Organisation contact person(s) would have received a reminder email this week pertaining to your member token(s), part of your AUSCERT membership perks – please utilise this by 18 April. Also a reminder that AUSCERT2021 has been approved to be a part of the Australian Government’s “Restarting Australia’s Business’ opportunity grant application scheme.” To find out more, please visit our conference website here. Until next week, have a good weekend everyone. Patching for HAFNIUM is just half of the story Date: 2021-03-16 Author: AUSCERT On the 2nd of March, a posting by The Department of Homeland Security (U.S.) didn’t mince its words and placed an Emergency Directive to perform a thorough check of any Microsoft Exchange servers at your control. This article served a guide for “agencies that have the expertise” to “forensically triage artefacts”. Since then there have been a number of tools that have been made available to enable the task of identifying, checking, mitigating, patching, and cleaning of your servers and systems. The key take-away here is that there has been (and this continues to grow) a huge amount of effort in making sure that caretakers go beyond the simple sole act of patching. Guidance for responders: Investigating and remediating on-premises Exchange Server vulnerabilities Date: 2021-03-16 Author: Microsoft Security Response Center Microsoft has provided the latest information for IT Pros and incident response teams with updated tools and investigation guidance to help organizations identify, remediate, defend against attacks associated with the recent Exchange Server vulnerabilities. Melbourne’s Eastern Health hit by suspected cyber attack Date: 2021-03-18 Author: iTnews One of Melbourne’s largest metropolitan public health services has postponed some elective surgery procedures after experiencing a “cyber incident”. The incident, which took place late on Tuesday, has forced Eastern Health to pull a number of its IT systems offline as a precaution. Eastern Health operates the Box Hill, Maroondah, Healesville and Angliss hospitals, as well as a number of health services, including Yarra Ranges Health and Wantirna Health. Microsoft releases one-click Exchange On-Premises Mitigation Tool Date: 2021-03-15 Author: Bleeping Computer Microsoft has released a one-click Exchange On-premises Mitigation Tool (EOMT) tool to allow small business owners to easily mitigate the recently disclosed ProxyLogon vulnerabilities. This month, Microsoft disclosed that four zero-day vulnerabilities were being actively used in attacks against Microsoft Exchange. These vulnerabilities are collectively known as ProxyLogon and are being used by threat actors to drop web shells, cryptominers, and more recently, the DearCry ransomware on exploited servers. Today, Microsoft released the EOMT one-click PowerShell script so that small business owners who do not have dedicated or security teams can get further help securing their Microsoft Exchange servers. IC3 Releases 2020 Internet Crime Report Date: 2021-03-17 Author: FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center has released its annual report. The 2020 Internet Crime Report includes information from 791,790 complaints of suspected internet crime—an increase of more than 300,000 complaints from 2019—and reported losses exceeding $4.2 billion. State-specific statistics have also been released and can be found within the 2020 Internet Crime Report and in the accompanying 2020 State Reports. The top three crimes reported by victims in 2020 were phishing scams, non-payment/non-delivery scams, and extortion. Victims lost the most money to business email compromise scams, romance and confidence schemes, and investment fraud. Notably, 2020 saw the emergence of scams exploiting the COVID-19 pandemic. The IC3 received over 28,500 complaints related to COVID-19, with fraudsters targeting both businesses and individuals. Survey: Australia, NZ organisations now realise their security overconfidence Date: 2021-03-16 Author: CSO Online It took a global pandemic, but enterprises and government agencies in Australia and New Zealand are now rethinking their approach to cybersecurity—taking it seriously for the first time in a while. That’s the conclusion of a survey of about 435 people in Australia and about 40 in New Zealand by the Australian arm of the global business services firm BDO and Australia’s AUSCERT cybersecurity rapid response team. Fewer organisations (55%) now feel confident in managing cyber incidents, down from 62% just a year earlier, the survey found. New PoC for Microsoft Exchange bugs puts attacks in reach of anyone Date: 2021-03-14 Author: Bleeping Computer A security researcher has released a new proof-of-concept exploit this weekend that requires slight modification to install web shells on Microsoft Exchange servers vulnerable to the actively exploited ProxyLogon vulnerabilities. Security flaws in Microsoft email software raise questions over Australia’s cybersecurity approach Date: 2021-03-12 Author: The Conversation On March 2, 2021, Microsoft published information about four critical vulnerabilities in its widely used Exchange email server software that are being actively exploited. It also released security updates for all versions of Exchange back to 2010. Microsoft has told cybersecurity expert Brian Krebs it was notified of the vulnerabilities in “early January”. The Australian Cyber Security Centre has also issued a notice on the vulnerabilities. The situation has been widely reported in the general media as well as specialist cybersecurity sites, but often inaccurately. But the situation also highlights a contradiction in government cybersecurity policy – there is a basic conflict between building offensive cybersecurity capabilities and protecting our own businesses and citizens. ASB-2021.0048.5 – UPDATE ALERT Microsoft Exchange Server: Execute arbitrary code/commands – Remote/unauthenticated Microsoft’s out-of-band critical updates address a number of Microsoft Exchange Server Remote Code Execution Vulnerabilities. ESB-2021.0872.2 – UPDATED ALERT BIG-IP Products: Multiple vulnerabilities F5 Networks identifies more BIG-IP Products impacted by the Advanced WAF/ASM buffer-overflow vulnerability. ESB-2021.0906 – ALERT Google Chrome: Multiple vulnerabilities Google’s update for Google Chrome fixes multiple vulnerabilities. ESB-2021.0943 – shadow: Multiple vulnerabilities Several vulnerabilities discovered in the shadow suite of login tools. ESB-2021.0950 – Cisco Products: Multiple vulnerabilities Cisco has released software updates that address multiple vulnerabilities in Cisco RV132W VPN Routers. Stay safe, stay patched and have a good weekend! The AUSCERT team

Patching for HAFNIUM is just half of the story UPDATE 2021-03-17  Altered the diagram with respect to new guidance from Microsoft [6]   On the 2nd of March, a posting by The Department of Homeland Security (U.S.) didn’t mince its words and placed an Emergency Directive to perform a thorough check of any Microsoft Exchange servers at your control [1]. This article served a guide for “agencies that have the expertise” to “forensically triage artefacts”. Note that the 2nd of March was two weeks ago now – since then there have been a number of tools that have been made available to enable the task of identifying, checking, mitigating, patching, and cleaning of your servers and systems [2][3][4]. These tools were created to help caretakers of Microsoft Exchange Servers that are deemed vulnerable to quickly AND efficiently purge – to the best effort possible – any compromise(s) of the servers.  The lesson here is that there has been (and this continues to grow) a huge amount of effort in making sure that caretakers go beyond the simple sole act of patching. Currently there are activities from third-parties to help notify those caretakers of Exchange Servers should their systems appear flagged as being vulnerable. More often than not, the response may be is “It’s OK, we have just patched!”. Whilst this in itself is good, in the light of the fact that these vulnerabilities were 0-day, and the patch came after exploit activities were detected, ALL instances of the Exchange Server needs to be checked if any compromise(s) have happened – due to the fact that persistent mechanisms, such as a webshell(s), may have been already installed.  Indicators of Compromise are being gathered on a daily basis [5], and the tools are being revamped so it also means that each time there is an update to the tools made available, it may also be wise to check if the newest version picks anything up! A diagram (see below) has been created by our team, which should assist Microsoft Exchange server caretakers to check and see where in their task-flow they are at.  Let it be noted there is no real hard-stop listed on this diagram. Until there are no more indicators being published and the tool(s) have stopped being updated, we recommend referring to it. Additionally, there are bound to be more useful tool(s) made available after the publication of this article – so do stay vigilant!     Good luck, stay informed and stay safe. AUSCERT Team    References [1] https://cyber.dhs.gov/ed/21-02/ [2] https://github.com/microsoft/CSS-Exchange/tree/main/Security [3] https://github.com/ANSSI-FR/DFIR-O365RC [4] https://checkmyowa.unit221b.com/ [5] https://us-cert.cisa.gov/ncas/alerts/aa21-062a [6] https://msrc-blog.microsoft.com/2021/03/16/guidance-for-responders-investigating-and-remediating-on-premises-exchange-server-vulnerabilities/    Resource noted in Diagram  NMAP Scan Report – http-vuln-cve2021-26855.nse https://github.com/microsoft/CSS-Exchange/tree/main/Security#http-vuln-cve2021-26855nse Shadowserver Reports March 11 ’21 https://www.shadowserver.org/news/shadowserver-special-reports-exchange-scanning/March 12 ’21 https://www.shadowserver.org/news/shadowserver-special-reports-exchange-scanning-2/March 15 ’21 https://www.shadowserver.org/news/shadowserver-special-reports-exchange-scanning-3/March 15 ’21 https://www.shadowserver.org/news/shadowserver-special-reports-exchange-scanning-4/ Microsoft Defender for Endpoint https://www.microsoft.com/en-au/microsoft-365/security/endpoint-defender Check My OWA https://checkmyowa.unit221b.com/ ExchangeMitigations.ps1 https://github.com/microsoft/CSS-Exchange/tree/main/Security#exchangemitigationsps1   PATCH THE SERVERS https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/exchange-team-blog/released-march-2021-exchange-server-security-updates/ba-p/2175901   microsoft/CSS-Exchange https://github.com/microsoft/CSS-Exchange/tree/main/Security   aa21-062a https://us-cert.cisa.gov/ncas/alerts/aa21-062a  

2020 Year in Review AUSCERT Year in Review for 2020, originally published here: https://auscert.shorthandstories.com/auscert-year-in-review-2020/index.html The various PDF files listed below reflect the various infographs showcased on the report. Some key highlights below: > We saw a rise in the number of AUSCERT membership organisations, reflecting the current sentiment around our country – cyber security is everyone’s responsibility. > In 2020, the AUSCERT team handled over 3800 incident management tickets. > Despite the challenges in 2020, the team stayed engaged with our member constituents and sector; emphasizing the importance of this aspect as a part of our 2021 strategy (re-visit this here: https://wordpress-admin.auscert.org.au/blog/auscert-what-expect-2021)   Attached Documents auscert-year-in-review-2020.pdf currentmembers.pdf incidents_bymonth.pdf incidents_byclassification.pdf incidents-3d.pdf bulletins_totals.pdf bulletins.pdf msin_byincidentclassification.pdf msin_byclassificationpie.pdf msin_byclassificationtotals.pdf