Weekly Infosec News Brief: 04-10 April

Zero-Day Flash Vulnerability Announced, Patch Available

A new vulnerability (CVE-2016-1019) in Adobe Flash was announced last week; the vulnerability is being actively exploited to install malware on vulnerable computers. Adobe stated that their latest update released in March prevents the worst type of damage from this vulnerability, such that most exploitations attempts will result only in a crash rather than remote code execution. On Thursday, Adobe released a patch to fix the vulnerability. The patched version is 21.0.0.213, and you can check if you have the latest version installed by visiting <a href=" flash="" http:="" products="" www.adobe.com=""> this link . Keep in mind that different browsers may have separate installations of Flash, so you should check with all browsers on your system(s).
http://www.eweek.com/security/adobe-working-on-zero-day-pwn2own-patches-for-flash.html
https://helpx.adobe.com/security/products/flash-player/apsa16-01.html
https://helpx.adobe.com/security/products/flash-player/apsb16-10.html


 FBI Issues New Warning on Email-Based Wire Fraud

Last Monday the FBI posted a new warning regarding a dramatic increase in "business email compromise," or "CEO Email Fraud" attacks. This form of attack involves attackers sending fake messages to company personnel, typically accounting personnel, purporting to be from the CEO and instructing them to make large wire transfers. In some cases, these attempts are facilitated by the compromise of organizational email systems, so that the fake messages originate from the CEO's actual email account. These types of attacks have led to approximately $2.3B in losses to US organizations in the last three years. Organizations need to ensure that personnel are aware of this fraud trend and that procedural controls are in place to verify all requests for financial transactions.
https://www.fbi.gov/phoenix/press-releases/2016/fbi-warns-of-dramatic-increase-in-business-e-mail-scams


 WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla Sites Falling Victim to Attacks

Most organizational and other websites today are built around some form of web-based content management system (CMS). These systems allow users to update the website by logging into an administrative web interface, and greatly ease the task of maintaining a web site. However, these systems all have a history of significant vulnerabilities ranging from those that might allow an attacker to make unauthorized alterations to a website to vulnerabilities that could allow and attacker to take full control of the web server and use it to attack other parts of the organization's network. One recent ransomware attack at a Canadian hospital appears to have been facilitated by a website running an outdated version of the Joomla CMS. Also, the hack of the Mossack Fonseca law firm in Panama (which led to the "Panama Papers" disclosures) appears to have possibly been carried out through an outdated Drupal-powered website. Organizations running these or other web-based CMS software should ensure that they stay aware of software updates available for their software and promptly install all security-related updates.
https://blog.malwarebytes.org/security-world/2016/03/canadian-hospital-serves-ransomware-via-hacked-website/
http://www.scmagazine.com/pros-examine-mossack-fonseca-breach-wordpress-plugin-drupal-likely-suspects/article/488697/
http://www.zdnet.com/article/wordpress-joomla-domains-under-attack-through-jquery-security-flaw/


 Google Improves Free Network Security Monitoring Service

Google began offering their Safe Browsing Alerts for Network Administrators tool five years ago. Last week Google announced further improvements to this service, which alerts network administrators to the presence of malicious URLs and links within their networks. These are often early indicators of breaches of web servers, among other forms of attacks. Admins can begin receiving alerts by registering their networks here.


 Construction Firms Warns of Employee Data Compromise Through Corporate Tax Vendor

A breach announcement was made last week by Whiting-Turner, a Maryland-based construction firm. They stated that their corporate tax vendor had been compromised, and that employees' personal information (names, SSNs, data of birth, etc.) were taken. This event was followed by a rash of fraudulent tax filings in the names of employees and employees' children. Fraudulent tax filings are a common method used by criminals to monetize stolen personal information. The firm is offering free credit monitoring to victims. This incident highlights the need for organizations to ensure that any third party with whom they are entrusting sensitive information is using adequate data protection practices.
http://www.csoonline.com/article/3053658/security/latest-tax-related-data-breach-could-affect-employees-and-their-children.html

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