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VirusTotal announced VirusTotal Collections, a new service that allows security researchers to share sets of Indicators of Compromise (IoCs).
VirusTotal announced VirusTotal Collections, a new service that allows threat researchers to share Indicators of Compromise (IoCs).
A collection is a live report that includes IoCs associated with a specific threat and it is available for VirusTotal registered users. The reports will also include up-to-date VirusTotal analysis metadata.
“A collection is a live report which contains a title, a group of IoCs (file hashes, URLs, domains and IP addresses) and an optional description. Collections are open to our VirusTotal Community (registered users) and they will be enhanced with VirusTotal analysis metadata providing the latest information we have for the IoCs, along with some aggregated tags.” reads the announcement published by Virus Total.
Registered VirusTotal users will be able to add or remove IoCs to/from the reports.
Security experts often use sharing platforms like Pastebin to share IoCs with the community, now they have a dedicated platform to do it, which is also integrated with the information from Virus Total. Users can create IoC collections in the VirusTotal home page, under the SEARCH tab.
In November, we discovered 81 publicly disclosed cyber security incidents, accounting for 223,615,390 breached records.
With one month left in 2021, the annual total running total of compromised records is to just shy of 5 billion.
Keep an eye out for our end-of-year report in the next few weeks, where we’ll break down the findings of these lists – or subscribe to our Weekly Round-up to get the latest news sent straight to your inbox.
In the meantime, you can find the full list of security incidents below, with those affecting UK organizations listed in bold.
Cybersecurity researchers from F-Secure have discovered two critical vulnerabilities, collectively tracked as Printing Shellz, that impact approximately 150 multifunction printer models.
The vulnerabilities can be exploited by attackers to take control of vulnerable devices and steal sensitive information, from enterprise networks. The issues date back to 2013 and HP fixed them ([1], [2]) in November. The company acknowledged F-Secure Labs researchers Timo Hirvonen and Alexander Bolshev for reporting the vulnerabilities on April 29, 2021.
The two vulnerabilities are:
CVE-2021-39237 (CVSS score: 7.1) – An information disclosure vulnerability impacting certain HP LaserJet, HP LaserJet Managed, HP PageWide, and HP PageWide Managed printers.
CVE-2021-39238 (CVSS score: 9.3) – A buffer overflow vulnerability impacting certain HP Enterprise LaserJet, HP LaserJet Managed, HP Enterprise PageWide, and HP PageWide Managed products.
“We found multiple exploitable bugs in a HP multi-function printer (MFP). The flaws are in the unit’s communications board and font parser.” reads the FAQs published by F-Secure researchers. “An attacker can exploit them to gain code execution rights, with the former requiring physical access while the latter can be accomplished remotely. A successful attack will allow an adversary to achieve various objectives, including stealing information or using the compromised machine as a beachhead for future attacks against an organization.“
Below are the attack scenarios detailed by the researchers:
Printing from USB drives. This is what we used during the research. In the modern firmware versions, printing from USB is disabled by default.
Social engineering a user into printing a malicious document. It may be possible to embed an exploit for the font-parsing vulnerabilities in a PDF. The opportunities for social engineering are endless: HR printing a CV before a job interview, a receptionist printing a boarding pass, etc.
Printing by connecting directly to the physical LAN port.
Printing from another device that is under attacker’s control and in the same network segment. This also implies that the respective flaw (CVE-2021-39238) is wormable, i.e., the exploit can be used to create a worm that replicates itself to other vulnerable MFPs across the network.
Cross-site printing (XSP): sending the exploit to the printer directly from the browser (by tricking a user into visiting a malicious website, for example) using an HTTP POST to JetDirect port 9100/TCP. This is probably the most attractive attack vector.
Direct attack via exposed UART ports that are mentioned in CVE-2021-39237, if attacker has physical access to the device for a short period of time.
As a resource, the internet is a wonderful place for children to learn, explore ideas, and express themselves creatively. The internet is also key in a child’s social development, helping to strengthen communication skills, for example when playing games or chatting with friends.
However, parents should be aware that all these activities often come with risks. Kids online can be exposed to inappropriate content, cyberbullying, and even predators.
While keeping an eye on what your children see and do online helps protect them against these risks, it’s not easy monitoring your kids without feeling like you’re invading their privacy. Just asking what websites they visit may give the impression that you don’t trust your child.
The key to combatting any big risk is education. It’s important for you and your children to be aware of the dangers, how to protect against them, and how to identify the warning signs. This is why we’ve put together this guide, to help both you and your kids* understand how to navigate the internet safely.
*Look out for our “For Kids” tips below, which you can share with your kids and teens.
A 2020 study by the Pew Research Center found that:
86% of parents of a child under age 11 limit their child’s screen time, while 75% check what their child does online.
71% of parents of a child age 11 or under are concerned their child has too much screen time.
66% of parents think parenting is harder today than it was 20 years ago, with 21% blaming social media in general.
65% of parents believe it’s acceptable for a child to have their own tablet computer before age 12.
Save 15% off books, toolkits, self-paced training courses, and selected Live Online training courses. Use code BF15 at checkout to claim your discount. But hurry, offer ends tomorrow 30 November, midnight PDT*.
This Black Friday ITG is offering you 15% off ITGP books, ITGP toolkits, self-paced training courses, and selected Live Online training courses.
The California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA) – An implementation and compliance guide This book gives you a comprehensive understanding of the CPRA, covering key terms, security requirements, the breach notification procedure, and the penalties for non-compliance. ISO 27001 controls – A guide to implementing and auditing The must-have book to understand the requirements of an ISMS (information security management system) based on ISO 27001.
Certified ISO 27001 ISMS Foundation Self-Paced Online Training Course This course provides a complete introduction to the key elements required to achieve ISO 27001 compliance.
This is sometimes due to budgets, as many organizations have not placed a high enough priority on cybersecurity, despite the growing number of high-profile attacks. But even those who are paying high salaries are finding that generous compensation is still not enough to hire and retain talent in this field. While 33% of CISOs surveyed by ISSA said that salary was the reason they left one organization for another, that doesn’t explain most departures or job switches.
Meanwhile, despite high salaries, many currently employed cybersecurity professionals are feeling overwhelmed and under intense pressure, both because they are often short on manpower and because the stakes of their jobs are even higher now with the increased number and severity of attacks. The ISSA survey showed that 62% of cybersecurity employees face a heavier workload due to their organizations not being able to hire enough workers, and 38% say they feel burnt out.
If money isn’t enough, what else can companies do to attract and keep cybersecurity talent?
Write job descriptions that show off the skills employees will gain, not just what skills they need to apply. Cybersecurity is a rapidly growing and dynamic field offering many opportunities. But the field, by its very nature, requires that the best professionals are constantly learning on the job to keep up with the latest technologies and the latest types of threats and attacks. By letting candidates know what types of things they will learn on the job and what experiences they will gain, a company can set itself apart and offer the added value of professional growth, giving it an advantage in the recruitment process.
Look beyond academic education. Academic degrees in cybersecurity and related fields are no doubt helpful, but they are not the only way to become qualified for a job in the sector. If someone does not have a degree, it does not mean that they will not be an excellent candidate, especially if they have the relevant experience. This includes those coming from military or government backgrounds. In fact, with the rise in state-backed cyberattacks, any level of cybersecurity experience in government or military organizations is a considerable advantage and may be more valuable than those with academic degrees or years of corporate experience. A number of new programs, including one backed by Microsoft, also promise to offer training without necessarily granting degrees; these are also worthwhile credentials for candidates.
Teach and mentor on the job. Organizations should realize that current employees in their IT and related departments may be able, with the right training, to learn cybersecurity skills. This can be a way to build up a cybersecurity team internally. Those receiving training in-house should also be assigned mentors who can help them along the way. Building a team internally gives employees opportunities to grow, which can also lead to increased job satisfaction and retention.
Integrate cybersecurity into the overall business strategy, and let recruits know this. Companies should involve the cybersecurity team in all steps of their business, from product development to marketing, and not just relegate them to being on call for incident responses, or when something goes wrong.
Threat actors are exploiting a recently addressed server-side request forgery (SSRF) vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2021-40438, in Apache HTTP servers.
The CVE-2021-40438 flaw can be exploited against httpd web servers that have the mod_proxy module enabled. A threat actor can trigger the issue using a specially crafted request to cause the module to forward the request to an arbitrary origin server.
The vulnerability was patched in mid-September with the release of version 2.4.49, it impacts version 2.4.48 and earlier.
“A crafted request uri-path can cause mod_proxy to forward the request to an origin server choosen by the remote user.” reads the change log for version 2.4.49.
Since the public disclosure of the vulnerability, several PoC exploits for CVE-2021-40438 have been published.
Now experts from Germany’s Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) and Cisco are warning of ongoing attacks attempting to exploit the vulnerability.
Cisco published a security advisory to inform its customers that it is investigating the impact of the issue on its products. The issue impacts Prime Collaboration Provisioning, Security Manager, Expressway series and TelePresence Video Communication Server (VCS) products. However, the IT giant states that it is still investigating its product line.
“In November 2021, the Cisco PSIRT became aware of exploitation attempts of the vulnerability identified by CVE ID CVE-2021-40438.” reads the security advisory published by CISCO.
The German BSI agency also published an alert about this vulnerability, it is aware of at least one attack exploiting this vulnerability.
“The BSI is aware of at least one case in which an attacker was able to do so through exploitation the vulnerability to obtain hash values of user credentials from the victim’s system. The vulnerability affects all versions of Apache HTTP Server 2.4.48 or older.” reads the alert published by the BSI.
Researchers from the National University of Singapore and Yonsei University in South Korea have devised a mobile application that uses smartphones’ time-of-flight (ToF) sensor to find tiny spy cameras hidden in everyday objects.
The app is more successful at detecting hidden cams than existing state-of-the-art commercial hidden camera detectors (CC308+, K18) and much more successful than the human eye/brain.
Resecurity, a Los Angeles-based cybersecurity company has identified an active a zero-day vulnerability in the TP-Link device with model number TL-XVR1800L (Enterprise AX1800 Dual Band Gigabit Wi-Fi 6 Wireless VPN Router), which is primarily suited to enterprises.
The identified vulnerability enables Remote Code Execution (RCE) which grants the ability to takeover of the device and then use it for malicious purposes, as well as to steal sensitive data too. It’s likely this vulnerability is present in other devices from the same family.
The affected device is orientated towards the enterprise segment and supports Wi-Fi 6 (the next-generation wireless standard which is faster than 802.11ac). Wi-Fi 6 officially arrived in late 2019, and Wi-Fi 6 enabled hardware was released throughout 2020. The main goal of this new standard is enhancing throughput-per-area in high-density scenarios, such as corporate offices, shopping malls and dense residential apartments.
Resecurity notified TP-Link on November 19th 2021, and received acknowledgment the very next day. TP-Link said they’re going to release a patch in a week (currently the 0-day vulnerability is in the wild). Resecurity shared Proof-of-Concept with TP-Link of how Remote Code Execution was achieved on the target device, along with multiple other vulnerabilities.
Below is the video PoC of the zero-day exploitation:
The Life and Times of Zero-Day Vulnerabilities and Their Exploits
New to the bug bounty and confused about where to start? Worry not! This reconnaissance for bug bounty hunters guides you to take the first step in bug bounty hunting.
Reconnaissance is the initial step in every penetration test, bug bounty, or ethical hacking. This step aims to gather the target’s information publicly available on the internet.
Publicly available data offers technical details about the network structure and systems. However, it also contains information about personnel and the firm that might be valuable later in the attack.
Two types of cyber reconnaissance are:
Passive Information Gathering
Active Information Gathering
Let’s utilize some suitable tools and gather the victim’s information passively first. The tools I will use to collect victim’s data will be:
Passive Recon Tools
Google Dork
Netcraft
WHOIS
Social Media
Active Recon Tools
Nmap
GoBuster
Dig
The above-mentioned tools are not the only tools; there are many tools available for data gathering which you can utilize.
Dark web monitoring seems to be a hot buzzword in discussions about cyberthreat intelligence (CTI) and how it helps cybersecurity strategy and operations. Indeed, dark web monitoring enables a better understanding of an attacker’s perspective and following their activities on dark web forums can have a great impact on cybersecurity readiness and posture.
Accurate and timely knowledge of attackers’ locations, tools and plans helps analysts anticipate and mitigate targeted threats, reduce risk and enhance security resilience. So why isn’t dark web monitoring enough? The answer lies in both coverage and context.
When we talk about visibility beyond the organization, one needs to make sure the different layers of the web are covered. Adversaries are everywhere, and vital information can be discovered in any layer of the web. In addition, dark web monitoring alone provides threat intelligence that is siloed and out of context. In order to make informed and accurate decisions, a CTI plan has to be both targeted, based on an organization’s needs and comprehensive, with extensive source coverage to support diverse use cases.
Be Wherever Adversaries Are
The internet as we know it is actually the open web, or the surface web. This is the top, exposed, public layer where organizations rarely look for CTI. The other layers are the deep web and the dark web, on which some sites are accessed through the Tor browser. Monitoring the deep/dark web is the most common source of CTI. However, to ensure complete visibility beyond the organization and optimal coverage for gathering CTI, all layers of the web should be monitored. Monitoring the dark web alone leaves an organization pretty much, well, in the dark.
The Shadow Brokers is a great example of why it is important to monitor more than just the dark web. In 2016, the Shadow Brokers published several hacking tools, including many zero-day exploits, from the “Equation Group,” which is considered to be tied to the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). The exploits and vulnerabilities mostly targeted enterprise firewalls, antivirus software and Microsoft products. The initial publication of the leak was through the group’s Twitter account on August 13, 2016, and the references and instructions for obtaining and decrypting the tools and exploits were published on GitHub and Pastebin, both publicly accessible.
The WannaCry ransomware attack in May 2017 was also first revealed on Twitter, as were different reports on the attack. Coverage of all layers of the web is necessary, yet even with expanded monitoring of additional layers of the web, an organization’s external threat intelligence picture remains incomplete and one-dimensional. There are additional threat intelligence sources to cover in order to get a complete threat intelligence view that is optimized for the needs of an organization. These include:
JFrog researchers have discovered 11 malicious Python packages in the Python Package Index (PyPI) repository that can steal Discord access tokens, passwords, and even carry out dependency confusion attacks.
Below is the list of malicious Python packages:
importantpackage / important-package
pptest
ipboards
owlmoon
DiscordSafety
trrfab
10Cent10 / 10Cent11
yandex-yt
yiffparty
The packages “importantpackage,” “10Cent10,” and “10Cent11” were able to establish a reverse shell on the compromised machine.
Experts pointed out that the “importantpackage” abused CDN TLS termination for data exfiltration. It uses the Fastly CDN to disguise communications with the C2 server as a communication with pypi.org.
This code causes an HTTPS request to be sent to pypi.python.org (which is indistinguishable from a legitimate request to PyPI,) which later gets rerouted by the CDN as an HTTP request to the C2 server psec.forward.io.global.prod.fastly.net (and vice versa, allowing for two-way communication).” states the report published by JFrog.
A malware campaign aimed at Microsoft Exchange servers exploits ProxyShell and ProxyLogon issues and uses stolen internal reply-chain emails to avoid detection.
The campaign was uncovered by TrendMicro researchers that detailed the technique used to trick victims opening the malicious email used as the attack vector.
The attacks were orchestrated by Squirrelwaffle, a threat actor known for sending malicious spam as replies to existing email chains.
Once compromised the Exchange servers, threat actors use the access to reply to the company’s internal emails in reply-chain attacks containing links to weaponized documents. Sending the messages from the organizations allow the attackers to bypass detection.
“In the same intrusion, we analyzed the email headers for the received malicious emails, the mail path was internal (between the three internal exchange servers’ mailboxes), indicating that the emails did not originate from an external sender, open mail relay, or any message transfer agent (MTA).” reads the analysis published by Trend Micro. “Delivering the malicious spam using this technique to reach all the internal domain users will decrease the possibility of detecting or stopping the attack, as the mail getaways will not be able to filter or quarantine any of these internal emails.”
While there are no guarantees that a business can detect a supply chain attack before it happens, there are 10 best practices that a business can consider to help mitigate risk and validate the security of its supply chain.
1. Evaluate the impact each supplier can have on your business if the supplier’s IT infrastructure is compromised. While a full-risk assessment is preferred, smaller organizations might not have the resources to conduct one. At a minimum, however, they should analyze the worst-case scenarios and ask questions such as:
How would a ransomware attack on this supplier’s systems impact my business?
How would my business be affected if the supplier’s source code was compromised by a Trojan virus?
If the supplier’s databases are compromised and data is stolen, how would that impact my business?
2. Evaluate internal IT resources and competencies for each supplier. Do they have a dedicated cybersecurity team led by a security manager or a CISO? It is important to identify the supplier’s security leadership because that is who can answer your questions. If the team is non-existent or poorly staffed with no real leadership, you may want to reconsider engaging with this supplier.
3. Meet with the supplier’s security manager or CISO to discover how they protect their systems and data. This can be a short meeting, phone call, or even an email conversation, depending on the risks identified in step 1.
4. Request evidence to verify what the supplier is claiming. Penetration reports are a useful way to do this. Be sure the scope of the test is appropriate and, whenever possible, request a report on two consecutive tests to verify that the supplier is acting on its findings.
5. If your supplier is a software provider, ask for an independent source code review. In some cases, the supplier may require an NDA to share the full report or may choose not to share it. When this happens, ask for an executive summary.
6. If your supplier is a cloud provider, you can scan the supplier’s networks, perform a Shodan search, or ask the supplier for a report of their own scans. If you plan to scan yourself, obtain a permit from the supplier and ask them to segregate customer addresses from their own so you are not scanning something irrelevant.
7. If the supplier is a software or cloud provider, find out if the supplier is running a bug bounty reward program. These programs help an organization find and fix vulnerabilities before attackers have a chance to exploit them.
8. Ask your suppliers how they are prioritizing their risks. For example, the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) is a free and open industry standard for assessing the severity of computer system security vulnerabilities and assign severity scores so the supplier can prioritize risk responses.
9. Request the supplier’s patching reports. The fact that they have a report demonstrates their commitment to security and managing vulnerabilities. If possible, try to get a report that is produced by an independent entity.
10. Steps 1 through 9 should be repeated annually, depending on the risk to and impact on your business. For a low-impact supplier, this may be performed less often. For a supplier that is mission-critical to the business’s success and is high risk, the business may want to develop a permanent evaluation process. However, large SaaS and IaaS providers may not be willing to participate in ongoing evaluations.
Nordpass has published its annual report, titled “Top 200 most common passwords,” on the use of passwords. The report shows that we are still using weak passwords.
The list of passwords was compiled with the support of independent researchers specializing in data breach analysis., the study is based on the analysis of a 4TB database containing passwords across 50 countries.
Most used passwords are still 123456, 123456789, 12345, qwerty, and “password”. Businesses fail to enforce strong passwords, and rarely request employees to enable multi-factor authentication (MFA).
The report revealed that the most common passwords in 2021 were:
123456 (103,170,552 hits)
123456789 (46,027,530 hits)
12345 (32,955,431 hits)
qwerty (22,317,280 hits)
password (20,958,297 hits)
12345678 (14,745,771 hits)
111111 (13,354,149 hits)
123123 (10,244,398 hits)
1234567890 (9,646,621 hits)
1234567 (9,396,813 hits)
Below is the map showing password leaks per capita:
Do you ever have trouble remembering your usernames and passwords when you visit a website? Access Denied password notebook is a safe and accessible place where you can save all of your important internet addresses, usernames, and passwords. To help you find what you’re searching for fast, the pages are structured into easy-to-follow parts.
The Quick and Easy Way to Manage Your Personal Usernames and Passwords!
At the end of April, Apple’s introduction of App Tracking Transparency tools shook the advertising industry to its core. iPhone and iPad owners could now stop apps from tracking their behavior and using their data for personalized advertising. Since the new privacy controls launched, almost $10 billion has been wiped from the revenues of Snap, Meta Platform’s Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
Now, a similar tool is coming to Google’s Android operating system—although not from Google itself. Privacy-focused tech company DuckDuckGo, which started life as a private search engine, is adding the ability to block hidden trackers to its Android app. The feature, dubbed “App Tracking Protection for Android,” is rolling out in beta from today and aims to mimic Apple’s iOS controls. “The idea is we block this data collection from happening from the apps the trackers don’t own,” says Peter Dolanjski, a director of product at DuckDuckGo. “You should see far fewer creepy ads following you around online.”
The vast majority of apps have third-party trackers tucked away in their code. These trackers monitor your behavior across different apps and help create profiles about you that can include what you buy, demographic data, and other information that can be used to serve you personalized ads. DuckDuckGo says its analysis of popular free Android apps shows more than 96 percent of them contain trackers. Blocking these trackers means Facebook and Google, whose trackers are some of the most prominent, can’t send data back to the mothership—neither will the dozens of advertising networks you’ve never heard of.
From a user perspective, blocking trackers with DuckDuckGo’s tool is straightforward. App Tracking Protection appears as an option in the settings menu of its Android app. For now, you’ll see the option to get on a waitlist to access it. But once turned on, the feature shows the total number of trackers blocked in the last week and gives a breakdown of what’s been blocked in each app recently. Open up the app of the Daily Mail, one of the world’s largest news websites, and DuckDuckGo will instantly register that it is blocking trackers from Google, Amazon, WarnerMedia, Adobe, and advertising company Taboola. An example from DuckDuckGo showed more than 60 apps had tracked a test phone thousands of times in the last seven days.Most Popular
My own experience bore that out. Using a box-fresh Google Pixel 6 Pro, I installed 36 popular free apps—some estimates claim people install around 40 apps on their phones—and logged into around half of them. These included the McDonald’s app, LinkedIn, Facebook, Amazon, and BBC Sounds. Then, with a preview of DuckDuckGo’s Android tracker blocking turned on, I left the phone alone for four days and didn’t use it at all. In 96 hours, 23 of these apps had made more than 630 tracking attempts in the background.
Using your phone on a daily basis—opening and interacting with apps—sees a lot more attempted tracking. When I opened the McDonald’s app, trackers from Adobe, cloud software firm New Relic, Google, emotion-tracking firm Apptentive, and mobile analytics company Kochava tried to collect data about me. Opening the eBay and Uber apps—but not logging into them—was enough to trigger Google trackers.
At the moment, the tracker blocker doesn’t show what data each tracker is trying to send, but Dolanjski says a future version will show what broad categories of information each commonly tries to access. He adds that in testing the company has found some trackers collecting exact GPS coordinates and email addresses.
“You should see far fewer creepy ads following you around online.”
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