December 5, SecurityWeek – (International) Chrome 55 patches 36 flaws, blocks Flash by default. Google released Chrome 55 patching a total of 36 security flaws including 12 high risk flaws in PDFium, Blink, DevTools, and V8, as well as 9 medium severity issues, and 5 low risk flaws, among other patched vulnerabilities. In addition to resolving the security flaws, Chrome 55 enhances user security by blocking Websites that contain Adobe Flash content out-of-the-box. Source
December 5, U.S. Department of Justice – (International) Avalanche network dismantled in international cyber operation. The U.S. Department of Justice announced December 5 that a multinational operation involving arrests and searches in four countries successfully dismantled Avalanche, a complex network of computer servers that allegedly hosted more than two dozen of the most severe types of malicious software and facilitated financial crimes and money laundering campaigns worldwide. The Avalanche network reportedly served clients operating as many as 500,000 infected computers worldwide on a daily basis and caused hundreds of millions of dollars in losses. Source
December 6, SecurityWeek – (International) Backdoor found in many Sony security cameras. Sony Corporation released firmware updates for 80 of its SNC series Internet Protocol (IP) cameras equipped with the IPELA ENGINE signal processing system after researchers from SEC Consult found that the firmware contains hardcoded password hashes for the admin and root users that are easy to crack, and discovered a Common Gateway Interface (CGI) binary that allows a remote user to enable the Telnet service on a device by sending it a specially crafted Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) request with authentication data, which can be easily found in plain text in a file, and then leverage the root account to gain remote access with elevated privileges. Once an attacker gains root access to a camera, the malicious actor can disrupt camera functionality, spy on the user, breach the network that houses the camera, and infect it with Mirai-like malware. Source
Above Reprinted from the USDHS Daily Open Source Infrastructure Report