Articles In Security

By Nancy Rand, Posted in Security

November 15, SecurityWeek – (International) Cryptsetup flaw exposes Linux systems to attacks. Security researchers discovered a vulnerability affecting the disk encryption utility Cryptsetup that could allow attackers with physical access to a targeted Linux system to gain root access to the system, and copy, modify, or destroy data on the hard disk by holding down the “Enter” key for approximately 70 seconds during boot. The flaw occurs when the system partition is encrypted using the Lin... read more.

• November 16, 2016

By Nancy Rand, Posted in Security

November 11, SecurityWeek – (National) U.S. authorities reach settlement with Adobe over 2013 breach. Authorities in 15 States reached a $1 million settlement with Adobe Systems November 10 after the company reportedly failed to employ reasonable measures to protect its customers’ personal information and detect malicious activity within its network, causing a massive data breach in 2013 that compromised over 150 million records. As part of the settlement, Adobe agreed to institute new policies... read more.

• November 15, 2016

By Nancy Rand, Posted in Security

November 10, SecurityWeek – (International) Hackers can abuse iOS WebView to make phone calls. A security researcher reported that Apple mobile operating system (iOS) applications such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and others can be abused by a malicious actor to initiate phone calls to arbitrary phone numbers from a victim’s device by convincing a user to open a specially crafted Webpage via an affected app that redirects the victim to a TEL Uniform Resource Identifier (URI), which triggers the call. T... read more.

• November 14, 2016

By Nancy Rand, Posted in Security

November 9, IDG News Service – (International) Microsoft patches 68 vulnerabilities, two actively exploited ones. Microsoft released 14 security bulletins resolving a total of 68 vulnerabilities in Windows, Office, Edge, Internet Explorer, and SQL Server. Two of the vulnerabilities have been exploited in the wild, including a zero-day that is being leveraged by a group of attackers dubbed Fancy Bear, APT28 or Strontium, and a second flaw that could allow for remote code execution and enable an attacke... read more.

• November 10, 2016

By Nancy Rand, Posted in Security

November 7, SecurityWeek – (International) Critical privilege escalation flaws found in MySQL. Oracle Corporation released updates for its MySQL database management systems after a security researcher discovered an arbitrary code execution flaw and race condition issue in MySQL that a malicious actor could chain together to escalate privileges to root and fully compromise a targeted system. Percona released an update for its Percona Server for MySQL and Percona XtraDB cluster to address the same vulne... read more.

• November 08, 2016

By Nancy Rand, Posted in Security

November 4, Help Net Security – (International) GitLab plugs critical flaw in its code repository manager software. GitLab released security updates for its Community Edition (CE) and Enterprise Edition (EE) of its code repository manager software resolving a critical flaw in the import/export project feature that did not adequately check for symbolic links in user-provided archives, thereby allowing an authenticated user to access the contents of any file accessible to the GitLab service account. Sou... read more.

• November 07, 2016

By Nancy Rand, Posted in Security

November 2, SecurityWeek – (International) Belkin WeMo devices expose smartphones to attacks. Invincea security researchers discovered two serious vulnerabilities affecting Belkin’s WeMo home automation devices and their associated Android applications, including a flaw that could be exploited to remotely gain root access to a WeMo device, and a cross-site scripting (XSS) flaw in WeMo’s Android app that could be exploited to execute arbitrary JavaScript code in the context of the Android a... read more.

• November 04, 2016

By Nancy Rand, Posted in Security

November 2, The Register – (International) Multiple RCE flaws found in Memcached web speed tool. Web performance tool Memcached received security patches after a security researcher from Cisco Systems, Inc., discovered that Memcached version 1.4.31 and earlier were plagued with three integer overflow vulnerabilities that could be exploited to achieve remote code execution (RCE) on a targeted system, and are manifested in Memcached functions used to insert, append, or modify key-value data pairs. The r... read more.

• November 03, 2016

By Nancy Rand, Posted in Security

November 1, Help Net Security – (International) Google warns of actively exploited Windows zero-day. Google disclosed a Microsoft Windows zero-day local privilege escalation vulnerability in the Windows kernel that could allow attackers to escape the sandbox. Google researchers warned that the flaw is being actively exploited in the wild. Source October 31, SecurityWeek – (International) Nymaim starts using PowerShell to download payload. Verint security researchers discovered the Nymaim malwar... read more.

• November 02, 2016

By Nancy Rand, Posted in Security

October 30, Softpedia – (International) Serial spammer pleads guilty, faces up to ten years in jail. A Florida resident pleaded guilty October 27 for orchestrating spam campaigns where he and 2 co-conspirators operated a legitimate business named A Whole Lot of Nothing LLC, which provided on-demand spam campaigns for legitimate business and illegal parties, including groups selling untested pharmaceutical drugs. The charges state the trio built botnets to distribute their spam, constructed proxy netwo... read more.

• November 01, 2016