Weekly InfoSec News Brief 27 April-03 May

Major WordPress Vulnerability Announced; Updates Available

WordPress, the highly popular web content management system, announced a major vulnerability last Monday. This vulnerability allows an attacker to take over a WordPress website by posting a specially-crafted comment. The new, patched version is 4.2.1. If you're not sure whether you're running WordPress on your website, it's quite possible that you are. If you need help identifying potentially vulnerable software on your servers, Anchor can assist you. A properly-configured web application firewall (WAF) is another recommended means to protect your website, often even against zero-day attacks.
http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/04/27/just-released-wordpress-0day-makes-it-easy-to-hijack-millions-of-websites/
https://wordpress.org/news/2015/04/wordpress-4-2-1/


Email Provider SendGrid Hacked, Customer Credentials Stolen

SendGrid, an email provider user by thousands of companies, has confirmed a major breach. And employees account was compromised by attackers, who used that employees credentials to the usernames, email addresses, and passwords of a large number of customers. When the story first broke in early April, SendGrid stated that only one customer was affected, but the new disclosure states that a large number of customers' data was taken. What is your organization doing to ensure your cloud service vendors follow responsible security practices?
https://sendgrid.com/blog/update-on-security-incident-and-additional-security-measures/
http://krebsonsecurity.com/2015/04/sendgrid-employee-account-hacked-used-to-steal-customer-credentials/


Study Shows that over Three Quarters of Java installations are Out-of-Date

For a long time, Java has been a major source of client-side vulnerabilities and breaches. Keeping the Java Runtime Environment software updated is a key measure to avoiding these. A recent study by Secunia, however, claims that 77% of JRE installations are out-of-date. Apple Quicktime and Adobe Reader were two other programs that are frequently not kept updated (Reader is another common source of client-side breaches). While organizations typically do well in keeping Microsoft operating systems and applications updated, other software from other vendors is often not updated nearly as frequently or promptly. Anchor can help you identify shortcomings in your patch management process and help you resolve them.
http://www.scmagazine.com/secunia-issues-us-patching-study/article/412153/


Many Federal Agency Breaches Dues to Lack of Strong Authentication Mechanisms

The federal government has been requiring the use of two-factor authentication for many years, but some agencies are still not fully compliant. OMB's annual FISMA report says that 65% of civilian agency incidents could have been prevented by the use of strong authentication. Given how many banks and consumer-level account providers (e.g. Google and Facebook) offer two-factor authentication and the growth of affordable providers, it is difficult for organizations to justify not adopting this type of authentication mechanism.
http://www.nextgov.com/emerging-tech/emerging-tech-blog/2015/04/agencies-often-lack-strong-authentication-and-its-big-problem/111076/?oref=ng-channelriver

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