Weekly Infosec News Brief: 16-24 November

Growing Concern About Java Deserialization Bug as a Working Exploit is Demonstrated

A long-standing concern about how Java handles serialized objects is drawing increased concern because of a practical exploit demonstrated by Foxglove Security last week. The exploit potentially affects a large number of Java web applications (Java Server Pages), and has been proven to affect common middleware layers including JBoss, WebSphere, and WebLogic. The flaw's exploitability is highly dependent on how applications are developed; if your enterprise has any externally-exposed Java-based web applications, you should ensure your developers are checking for this flaw.
http://www.darkreading.com/informationweek-home/why-the-java-deserialization-bug-is-a-big-deal/d/d-id/1323237
http://foxglovesecurity.com/2015/11/06/what-do-weblogic-websphere-jboss-jenkins-opennms-and-your-application-have-in-common-this-vulnerability/#thevulnerability


 Dell Laptops Shipped with Unsecure Certificate Authority Installed

Dell laptops shipped since this August included, pre-installed, a root certificate authority from Dell called "eDellRoot" that also included the authority's own private key. Even deleting the root certificate does not solve the problem, as the "Dell Foundation Services" Windows service will re-install the certificate if it is deleted. The Dell System Detect service has also been found to install its own root certificate, including the private key. Because these certificates include their own private keys and are installed as root certificate authorities in the OS, an attacker could create their own certificates signed by these and the relevant computers would see them as legitimate signed certificates for websites, drivers, and other software. Lenovo was found last year to similarly install their own root certificates for pre-installed software. Because of the difficulty of avoiding these types of issues with vendor-supplied Windows installations, Anchor recommends that organizations install their own operating system build on all PCs rather than using a default install provided by a PC vendor.
http://krebsonsecurity.com/2015/11/security-bug-in-dell-pcs-shipped-since-815/
http://www.pcworld.com/article/3008478/security/and-then-there-were-two-another-dangerous-dell-root-certificate-discovered.html


Pentagon Decides to Eliminate Clickable Links from All Organizational Email

The Department of Defense's Deputy CIO for Security, Richard Hale, announced last week that the department is working to ensure that all official ".mil" email will not include clickable links. DOD has long prevented HTML emails from rendering, but many email clients still automatically render web links in a clickable form. In addition to eliminating clickable links, DOD is marking messages originating outside DOD as coming from a "Non-DOD source" to make spoofing of DOD internal sources more difficult. These are steps many organizations can take -- what anti-phishing measures has your organization implemented?
https://fcw.com/articles/2015/11/12/dot-mil-blocks-links.aspx


Email Security is Lacking for Many Domains, According to a Google Study

As a very large email provider, Google is in a unique position to observe the security and validation mechanisms in use by email servers at organizations large and small. Google recently issued a report on what such provisions where used by servers exchanging mails with Gmail servers. They found that the percentage of domains supporting TLS encryption for incoming and outgoing emails had increased greatly in the past two years, standing at 80% and 61%, respectively. However, lower-volume email servers are the least likely to use such encryption, suggesting that small businesses still have a long way to go in shoring up their email security. Authentication (SPF and DKIM, primarily) was used in 94% of messages received by Gmail, but again the lower-volume senders were least likely to employ these technologies. Does your organization use SPF or DKIM to authenticate your emails? Does your email server support TLS encryption?
https://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.com/2015/11/new-research-encouraging-trends-and.html
http://www.darkreading.com/endpoint/google-study-finds-email-security-a-mixed-bag/d/d-id/1323147

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