Weekly Infosec News Brief - Oct 19-25

Private Web-based Email Accounts of CIA Director and Secretary of Homeland Security Hacked

It was revealed this week that the CIA Director and Homeland Security Secretary’s private emails had been compromised by hackers, who published much of the information contained therein. The incident is interesting for two reasons. One was that the CIA Director’s private email included a number of potentially sensitive emails that had been forwarded from his White House email account during his time working there. The other is the method the attackers used, impersonating the account owners from one account to the next to gather the info necessary to reset their account passwords and gain control of the accounts. Organizations need to grapple with the reality that users’ personal accounts and devices can impact their work accounts and data, and should ensure that policy and training address these issues.
http://www.scmagazine.com/cia-director-brennans-personal-email-contained-sensitive-info-hacker-says/article/447996/
http://www.wired.com/2015/10/hacker-who-broke-into-cia-director-john-brennan-email-tells-how-he-did-it/


 Oracle Releases Quarterly Updates, Patching 25 Java Vulnerabilities as Well as Database Flaws

Oracle releases its batches of updates on a quarterly basis, and the latest was released last Tuesday. The list includes an update to Java that fixes 25 vulnerabilities, including 24 that potentially allow for remote code execution; at least one of the vulnerabilities has a highest-possible CVSS Base score of 10.0. Oracle Database Server and several other products also have patches for vulnerabilities with scores of 10.0. Updating Java should be a priority, as Java has been a frequent target of client-side exploits in the past.
http://www.scmagazine.com/oracle-previews-final-critical-patch-update-of-year-153-security-fixes/article/448005/
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/security/cpuoct2015-2367953.html


Apple Pulls iPhone Spyware From App Store

Last week Apple pulled hundreds of apps from its iOS App Store after the discovery that the Youmi advertising SDK they were created with was causing the apps created with it to gather private data from users’ phones. This issue mirrors the XcodeGhost issue last month, where a number of apps were pulled from the App Store after a malicious version of Apple's Xcode development tool was found to have inserted malware into dozens of apps. The App Store had previously been a largely reliable method of ensuring that iOS apps were secure, but these incidents raise concerns about Apple’s ability to prevent malicious apps from getting into the store.
http://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-pulls-hundreds-of-ios-apps-using-private-sdk-from-china-to-gather-user-data/


Cisco Releases Updates for ASA Firewalls to Fix Four Denial-of-Service Vulns

Last Friday Cisco released updated firmware for several models of their popular ASA firewalls appliances. This new firmware was intended to resolve several vulnerabilities that made the firewalls susceptible to being crashed simply by sending them specially-crafted packets. Most of the vulnerabilities were related to mal-formed DNS packets. Organizations using ASA firewalls are urged to check whether their appliances are covered by the updates and to update as soon as possible. The vulnerabilities are now publicly known and are not hard to exploit.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/10/23/cisco_asa_patches/?mt=1445839923248

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Weekly Infosec News Brief: 14-20 March

Image
Major Media Websites Caught up inNew Malicious Advertising Attacks Last week multiple major advertising networks, including Google's DoubleClick, AppNexus, Rubicon, and AOL were abused by attackers to serve up malicious advertisements on major media sites. These malicious advertisements were redirecting to the "Angler" exploit kit, which uses multiple means to attempt to compromise a browser and install malware. While such malicious ads are common on smaller websites, they are not unheard-of on major media sites. This outbreak, however, was unusually large and long-lived, lasting at least the better part of two days. Given how common malicious web ads are, some security experts are recommending the use of ad blocking technology in web browsers. http://www.computerworld.com/article/3044565/security/advertising-based-cyberattacks-hit-bbc-new-york-times-msn.html Malicious Macros in Word Documents Used to Install Malware with No Files Needed Everything old is new a
Read more

Weekly Infosec News Brief 20-26 July

Image
FBI Sees Massive Increase in Espionage, Including Industrial Espionage, Against the US The FBI on Thursday issued a press release discussing what they believe is an increasing threat of economic espionage against US companies. They estimate that such espionage may cost the US as much as "hundreds of billions" of dollars a year. This espionage is not just directed against large industrial companies, but any place where trade secrets and innovations might be found, including third-party organizations (e.g. business partners, vendors, consultants, lawyers, etc.) affiliated with targeted companies. A key take-away is that the threat is more widespread than most people think, and that few organizations are immune. https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/fbi-announces-economic-espionage-awareness-campaign http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/24/politics/fbi-economic-espionage/ Microsoft Releases Out-of-Cycle Patch for Critical Font Driver Bug A flaw uncovered in connecti
Read more

Critical Vulnerability Discovered in IIS 6.0 Web Services

Image
IIS 6, the version that runs on Windows 2003 Server, was revealed this week to have a serious vulnerability that could allow an attacker to run malicious code on the server. The vulnerability has apparently been known to some malicious groups for some time, as attacks exploiting this vulnerability have been observed as far back as summer of 2016. But last week a proof-of-concept exploit for the vulnerability was posted to GitHub, bringing public attention to the problems and providing potential attackers with a head start on developing their own exploit code.  That is likely to take this from a secretive exploit used by a few actors to one that will be widely used by many attackers, meaning anyone running a vulnerable server is a likely victim. Vulnerability announcements are common, but this one is especially problematic for several reasons: IIS 6.0 is a part of the Windows 2003 Server operating system, which aged out of support from Microsoft almost two years ago. There are an
Read more