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The Google Open Source Team scanned the Maven Central Java package repository and found that 35,863 packages (8% of the total) were using versions of the Apache Log4j library vulnerable to Log4Shell exploit and to the CVE-2021-45046 RCE.
“More than 35,000 Java packages, amounting to over 8% of the Maven Central repository (the most significant Java package repository), have been impacted by the recently disclosed log4j vulnerabilities (1, 2), with widespread fallout across the software industry.” reads the report published by Google.“As far as ecosystem impact goes, 8% is enormous.”
The Google experts used the Open Source Insights, a project used to determine open source dependencies, to assess all versions of all artifacts in the Maven Central Repository.
The experts pointed out that the direct dependencies account for around 7,000 of the affected packages. Most of the affected artifacts are related to indirect dependencies.
“The deeper the vulnerability is in a dependency chain, the more steps are required for it to be fixed. The following diagram shows a histogram of how deeply an affected log4j package (core or api) first appears in consumers dependency graphs.” reads the post published by the researchers. “For greater than 80% of the packages, the vulnerability is more than one level deep, with a majority affected five levels down (and some as many as nine levels down). These packages will require fixes throughout all parts of the tree, starting from the deepest dependencies first.”
But since the vulnerability was disclosed, 13% of all vulnerable packages have been fixed (4,620).
How long will it take for this vulnerability to be fixed across the entire ecosystem?
As Christmas 2021 approaches, spare a thought for your sysamins, for your IT team, and for your cybersecurity staff.
There may be plenty of mice stirring all through the IT house right up to Christmas Eve…
…because that’s the deadline set by the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) for patching the infamous Log4Shell vulnerability, a dangerously exploitable flaw in Apache’s widely used Log4j (Logging for Java) programming toolkit.
Since news first broke of the problem on 09 December 2021, Apache has a-patched the code not once but three times, variously fixing CVE-2021-44228 with version 2.15.0, quickly followed by 2.16.0 to fix a related bug dubbed CVE-2021-45046, foillowed quickly yet again by 2.17.0 to deal with CVE-2021-45105.
Why the pressure from CISA? Why the rush when we’re supposed to enjoying a global holiday season? Why not wait until New Year and deal with things then?
Here’s why your sysadmins are taking one (three, actually) for the team…
Pegasus spyware was allegedly used by governments to spy upon prominent journalists, politicians and activists.
A Google blog has revealed how the sophisticated software was used to attack iPhone users.
The software used a vulnerability in iMessages to hack into iPhones without the user’s knowledge.
The Pegasus spyware, developed by Israel’s NSO group, made headlines for being used by governments and regimes across the world including India to spy on journalists, activists, opposition leaders, ministers, lawyers and others. The spyware is accused of hacking into the phones of at least 180 journalists around the world, of which 40 are notable Indian personalities.
Now, a Google blog from the Project Zero team called the attacks technically sophisticated exploits and assessed the software to have capabilities rivalling spywares previously thought to be accessible to only a handful of nations.
The company has also faced multiple lawsuits including one in India where the Supreme Court (SC) set up a three-member panel headed by former SC judge RV Raveendran to probe whether the software was used by the government to spy on journalists and other dissidents.
Apart from India, Apple has also sued the Israeli firm after having patched its security exploit. The company was also banned in the United States after the details of the spyware were revealed. Let’s take a look at how this advanced snooping technology discretely worked on iPhones.
According to the Project Zero blog, a sample of the ForcedEntry exploit was worked upon by the team and Apple’s Security Engineering and Architecture (SEAR) group. Pegasus attacks on iPhones were possible due to the ForcedEntry exploit.
Pegasus is a spyware (Trojan/Script) that can be installed remotely on devices running on Apple ‘ s iOS & Google ‘ s Android operating systems. It is developed and marketed by the Israeli technology firm NSO Group. NSO Group sells Pegasus to ” vetted governments ” for ” lawful interception ” , which is understood to mean combating terrorism and organized crime, as the firm claims, but suspicions exist that it is availed for other purposes. Pegasus is a modular malware that can initiate total surveillance on the targeted device, as per a report by digital security company Kaspersky. It installs the necessary modules to read the user’s messages and mail, listen to calls, send back the browser history and more, which basically means taking control of nearly all aspects of your digital life. It can even listen in to encrypted audio and text files on your device that makes all the data on your device up for grabs.
Well, in case you missed it, the renowned OpenSSL cryptographic toolkit – a free and open source software product that we’re guessing is installed somewhere between one and three orders of magnitude more widely than Log4J – also published updates this week.
OpenSSL 1.1.1m replaces 1.1.1l (those last characters are M-for-Mike and L-for-Lima), and OpenSSL 3.0.1 replaces 3.0.0.
In case you were wondering, the popular X.Y.Z versioning scheme used by OpenSSL 3 was introduced at least in part to avoid the confusion caused by the trailing letter in the earlier version “numbering” system. As for OpenSSL 2, there wasn’t one. Only the 1.1.1 and the 3.0 series are currently supported, so updating versions such as OpenSSL 1.0.x means jumping to 1.1.1m, or directly to the OpenSSL 3 series.
“Applications may not behave correctly”
The good news is that the OpenSSL 1.1.1m release notes don’t list any CVE-numbered bugs, suggesting that although this update is both desirable and important (OpenSSL releases are infrequent enough that you can assume they arrive with purpose), you probably don’t need to consider it critical just yet.
But those of you who have already moved forwards to OpenSSL 3 – and, like your tax return, it’s ultimately inevitable, and somehow a lot easier if you start sooner – should note that OpenSSL 3.0.1 patches a security risk dubbed CVE-2021-4044.
As far as we’re aware, there are no viable known exploits for this bug, but as the OpenSSL release notes point out:
[The error code that may be returned due to the bug] will be totally unexpected and applications may not behave correctly as a result. The exact behaviour will depend on the application but it could result in crashes, infinite loops or other similar incorrect responses.
In theory, a precisely written application ought not to be dangerously vulnerable to this bug, which is caused by what we referred to in the headline as error conflation, which is really just a fancy way of saying, “We gave you the wrong result.”
Simply put, some internal errors in OpenSSL – a genuine but unlikely error, for example, such as running out of memory, or a flaw elsewhere in OpenSSL that provokes an error where there wasn’t one – don’t get reported correctly.
Instead of percolating back to your application precisely, these errors get “remapped” as they are passed back up the call chain in OpenSSL, where they ultimately show up as a completely different sort of error.
The ImControllerService service of Lenovo laptops is affected by a privilege elevation bug that can allow to execute commands with admin privileges.
Lenovo laptops, including ThinkPad and Yoga families, are affected by a privilege elevation issues that resides in the ImControllerService service allowing attackers to execute commands with admin privileges.
The vulnerabilities, tracked as CVE-2021-3922 and CVE-2021-3969, are a race condition vulnerability and a Time of Check Time of Use (TOCTOU) vulnerability respectively.
The flaws affect the ImControllerService service (“System Interface Foundation Service”) of all Lenovo System Interface Foundation versions below 1.1.20.3.
The Lenovo System Interface Foundation Service provides interfaces for multiple features, including system power management, system optimization, driver and application updates, for this reason it is not recommended to disable it.
The vulnerability was reported to Lenovo by researchers at NCC Group on October 29, 2021, and the vendor addressed it with the release of security updates on November 17, 2021. This week the company publicly disclosed the vulnerability.
“The following vulnerabilities were reported in the IMController component of Lenovo System Interface Foundation used by Lenovo Vantage.” reads the advisory published by the company.
“CVE-2021-3922: A race condition vulnerability was reported in IMController, a software component of Lenovo System Interface Foundation, that could allow a local attacker to connect and interact with the IMController child process’ named pipe.
CVE-2021-3969: A Time of Check Time of Use (TOCTOU) vulnerability was reported in IMController, a software component of Lenovo System Interface Foundation, that could allow a local attacker to elevate privileges.”
According to NCC Group, the ImController service comes installed on certain Lenovo devices, it runs as the SYSTEM user and periodically executes child processes that perform system configuration and maintenance tasks.
An attacker can exploit the vulnerabilities to elevate its privileges to SYSTEM and take over the vulnerable device.
The vulnerability resides in the way the ImControllerService handles the execution of highly privileged child processes which allows an unprivileged attacker with local access to the system to elevate their privileges.
The flawed vulnerable component periodically starts child processes to perform tasks and each of them opens a named pipe server to which any user on the system can connect.
“The parent process establishes a connection to the child’s server as soon as possible in order to send XML serialised commands over the named pipe. The child does not validate the source of the connection and parses the XML serialized commands. One of the commands that the parent process can send instructs the child to load a ‘plugin’ from an arbitrary location on the filesystem. The child process validates the digital signature of the plugin DLL file before loading the file into its address space and yielding execution to it.” reads the post published by NCC Group.“Successful exploitation of two vulnerabilities required to get the child to load a payload of the attacker’s choosing.”
The researchers noticed that the child process does not validate the source of the connection, this means it will begin accepting commands from the attacker using high-performance filesystem synchronization routines after the race condition has been exploited.
NCC Group researchers developed a proof of concept code that never failed to connect to the named pipe before the parent service could do so.
The second issue, the time-of-check to time-of-use (TOCTOU) vulnerability, is exploited to stall the loading process and replace the validated plugin with a malicious DLL file. The DLL is executed with high privileges.
Amongst all the brouhaha about Log4Shell, it’s easy to forget all the other updates that surround us.
Not only is it Patch Tuesday (keep your eye on our sister site news.sophos.com for the latest on that score later in the day)…
…but it’s also time to check your Apple devices, because Apple just pushed out a slew of its they-arrive-when-they’re-ready-and-don’t-expect-any-warning security patches.
As for iOS 14 and iOS 12, which are the official previous and pre-previous iPhone operating systems (in the same way that Big Sur and Catalina are the previous incarnations of macOS), there’s no sign of any updates for them.
Observant readers will notice that the URLs in the list above form an unbroken numeric sequence except for a gap at HT212977, so whether that’s a space left open for a delayed update for iOS 14 or not we can’t tell you…
…but we did notice that Apple’s main security noticeboard page, HT201222, still [2021-12-14T12:00Z] doesn’t mention the updates listed above.
In the past, we’ve noticed an apparent correlation between delayed updates for individual platforms and delayed listings on HT201222, but we have no idea whether that is coincidence rather that true correlation, or a desire on Apple’s part to hold off updating the central listing until all the new versions can be displayed in one go.
(Apple, as you know, has an official policy of saying as little as possible about updates and update cycles, so we shall have to wait and see.)
Experts warn that threat actors are actively attempting to exploit a second bug disclosed in the popular Log4j logging library.
American web infrastructure and website security company Cloudflare warns that threat actors are actively attempting to exploit a second vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2021-45046, disclosed in the Log4j library.
The CVE-2021-45046 received a CVSS score of 3.7 and affects Log4j versions from 2.0-beta9 through 2.12.1 and 2.13.0 through 2.15.0 (which was released to fix CVE-2021-44228).
The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) has already released a patch for the Log4Shell vulnerability (CVE-2021-44228), but this fix partially address the flaw in certain non-default configurations. An attacker with control over Thread Context Map (MDC) input data when the logging configuration uses a non-default Pattern Layout with either a Context Lookup (for example, $${ctx:loginId}) or a Thread Context Map pattern (%X, %mdc, or %MDC) can craft malicious input data using a JNDI Lookup pattern triggering a denial of service (DOS) condition.
Both issues were assessed with the release of Log4j 2.16.0 version that addresses the CVE-2021-45046 by removing support for message lookup patterns and disabling JNDI functionality by default.
“Hot on the heels of CVE-2021-44228 a second Log4J CVE has been filed CVE-2021-45046. The rules that we previously released for CVE-2021-44228 give the same level of protection for this new CVE.” states CloudFlare.”This vulnerability is actively being exploited and anyone using Log4J should update to version 2.16.0 as soon as possible, even if you have previously updated to 2.15.0. The latest version can be found on the Log4J download page.”
The bad news are not ended, because researchers at security firm Praetorian warned of a third security vulnerability the Log4j version 2.15.0 that was released to fix the initial Log4Shell.
This third vulnerability can be exploited by attackers to exfiltrate sensitive data in certain circumstances.
“However, in our research we have demonstrated that 2.15.0 can still allow for exfiltration of sensitive data in certain circumstances. We have passed technical details of the issue to the Apache Foundation, but in the interim, we strongly recommend that customers upgrade to 2.16.0 as quickly as possible.” states the post published by Praetorian.
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The recent discovery of a second Log4j vulnerability (CVE-2021-45046) has shown that the fix to address CVE-2021-44228 in Apache Log4j 2.15.0 was incomplete in certain non-default configurations.
This vulnerability could allow attackers to craft malicious input data using a JNDI Lookup pattern, resulting in a denial of service (DoS) attack.
“Note that previous mitigations involving configuration such as to set the system property ‘log4j2.noFormatMsgLookup’ to ‘true’ do NOT mitigate this specific vulnerability,” the Apache Log4j security team noted.
“Log4j 2.16.0 fixes this issue by removing support for message lookup patterns and disabling JNDI functionality by default. This issue can be mitigated in prior releases (<2.16.0) by removing the JndiLookup class from the classpath (example: zip -q -d log4j-core-*.jar org/apache/logging/log4j/core/lookup/JndiLookup.class).” The team advises users either to upgrade to version 2.12.2 (for Java 7) or 2.16.0 (for Java 8 or later), in which the Message Lookups feature has been removed and access to JNDI has been disabled by default, and explained why some of the mitigation measures shared a few days ago are incomplete.
Active exploitation
PoCs are constantly popping up on GitHub and getting forked. GitHub is steadily working on removing them, but the proverbial cat is now out of the bag, and there is no going back.
Exploitation attempts detected so far in the wild can be tied to ransomware groups and access brokers, botnet herders (delivering coin miners), and nation-backed APTs.
As we continue to monitor threats taking advantage of the CVE-2021-44228 Log4j 2 vulnerability, we’re seeing activity ranging from experimentation to exploitation from multiple groups, including nation-state actors and access brokers linked to ransomware: https://t.co/WWSxGvaiDy
“The way modern products are built is using a big hierarchy of dependencies, where developers use libraries written by third-party companies and engineers to speed up the software release process. Log4J is an extremely basic library that allows log writing in Java applications. The way CVE-2021-44228 affects comes in 3 layers – cloud products that directly use the Log4J, web applications that use libraries that use Log4J, and off-the-shelf software which is internally deployed on customer servers and endpoints,” says Michael Assraf, CEO at Vicarius.
“As fixing and deploying cloud applications can be fast, updating libraries that use Log4J can break functionality unless done with caution. The most problematic fixes are internally deployed software, which will have to wait for a vendor update or a security patch, in that scenario customers are advised to wait on further vendor guidance and as of right now are helpless in reacting. Examples include: Elasticsearch, Intellij IDE, Jira Confluence, Apache Tomcat, Minecraft, Apache Hadoop, Eclipse IDE, and many more.”
Gallagher says that the most immediate priority for defenders is to reduce exposure by patching and mitigating all corners of their infrastructure and investigate exposed and potentially compromised systems.
“Where systems have been identified as vulnerable, defenders should run an incident response process and monitor for signs of remote access trojans such as C2 call-backs. Secrets stored on exposed systems should also be rotated, particularly if they are exposed in environment variables. Lastly, consider critical third party vendors who may also be at risk,” he advised.
Mathew Eble, VP of Services at Praetorian, also warned the issue will be prone to false negatives.
“Externally there is no way to cover all the possible paths that exploitation can take. Even when external scanning tools get more sophisticated in how they identify the issue, we strongly advocate not relying on scan results as strong indicator of your risk,” he noted.
This recommendation is based on four issues the company has confirmed when working with customers. Based on this, they have expanded their initial recommendations for defenders.
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Maybe Log4j vulnerabilities are like rats—for every one that’s visible, multiple others scurry beneath the surface. It’s too early to tell if that’s what will happen with Log4j.
But just a day or so after a damaging vulnerability was disclosed, another has come to light. This time it’s believed to be moderate in severity.
“A second vulnerability involving Apache Log4j was found on Tuesday,” according to a MITRE alert. “The description on the new CVE 2021-45046 said the fix to address CVE-2021-44228 in Apache Log4j 2.15.0 was ‘incomplete in certain non-default configurations.’”
“When a vulnerability is discovered and makes as much noise as Log4Shell, it invariably signals that there are additional vulnerabilities in the same software or fixes for that software and that triggers additional research and discovery,” said Casey Ellis, founder and CTO at Bugcrowd.
“The technique of abusing JNDI lookups with user-generated data has been around for years,” agreed Davis McCarthy, principal security researcher at Valtix. “With the attention CVE-2021-44228 has received, I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw a third CVE related to Log4j2.”
Ellis pointed out that “in this case, the initial fix provided was developed in a way that mitigated the exploitable symptom, but didn’t properly address the root cause.”
Indeed, Apache said the fix addressing “CVE-2021-44228 in Apache Log4j 2.15.0 was incomplete in certain non-default configurations,” according to the alert. “This could allow attackers with control over thread context map (MDC) input data when the logging configuration uses a non-default pattern layout with either a context lookup (for example, $${ctx:loginId}) or a thread context map pattern (%X, %mdc, or %MDC) to craft malicious input data using a JNDI lookup pattern resulting in a denial-of-service (DOS) attack.”
The alert said, “Log4j 2.15.0 restricts JNDI LDAP lookups to localhost by default.” But previous mitigations that involve “configuration such as to set the system property `log4j2.noFormatMsgLookup` to `true` do not mitigate this specific vulnerability,” MITRE warned. “Log4j 2.16.0 fixes this issue by removing support for message lookup patterns and disabling JNDI functionality by default. This issue can be mitigated in prior releases (<2.16.0) by removing the JndiLookup class from the classpath (example: zip -q -d log4j-core-*.jar org/apache/logging/log4j/core/lookup/JndiLookup.class).”
Ellis said the situation “also highlights the dangerous dependency open source users have on libraries which power large portions of the Internet but are ultimately written and maintained by unfunded volunteers with limited available time.” He gave credit to “ the Log4j maintainers” who he said likely “had an even busier and more stressful week than those in cybersecurity and are working on fixing and improving Log4j’s resilience as quickly as they can.”
Incomplete fixes are often a result of rushing patches to fix vulnerabilities, noted John Bambenek, principal threat hunter at Netenrich. The solution, he said, “is to disable JNDI functionality entirely (which is the default behavior in the latest version).”
Since “at least a dozen groups are using these vulnerabilities,” immediate action should then be taken “to either patch, remove JNDI or take it out of the classpath—preferably all of the above,” said Bambenek.
Manu Singh, risk engineer at Cowbell Cyber, sees an opportunity to show “a real-life use case where cyberinsurers can step up and help businesses.”
Singh said that Cowbell Cyber notified its policyholders of the vulnerabilities. “And our risk engineering team is available to help,” said Singh. “This is crucial in the small and mid-size market where security and IT resources are limited.”
Cars are becoming increasingly smart and an extension to our mobile phones. How is this impacting users’ security and privacy?
With the expansion of our technology in use, our vulnerability surface increases dramatically. Ultimately, this is yet another vulnerability to keep in mind for your own safety and security. As we grow in our technology and dependence thereon, that inherently expands the opportunity for bad actors to take advantage of the dependence. The difference with car vulnerability, however, is you’re not just talking about your personal data being compromised, but rather the influence over your car while driving could affect your immediate physical safety.
In terms of privacy, the onboard computers of used, rented, or crashed/totaled vehicles can contain sensitive residual data from previous drivers such as contact and calendar details, unencrypted videos, and more.
What are the biggest vulnerabilities of today’s modern cars?
The lack of one single “gate keeper” is a substantial issue when it comes to modern car vulnerability. The patchwork of various technologies being meshed together for the overall car means not only is there not one single overseer of that technology but also that protocols are set without security in mind because they need to be able to easily communicate with each other.
In addition, we see the same vulnerabilities that you have with your phones and computers: protocol vulnerability. The difference is what the bad actors could have access to: electronic control units (ECUs) which all communicate to access and control the subsystems in a car such as your braking or navigation system. Not only could the hacker access the vehicle information resulting in influence on the car such as the alert systems within the vehicle, but could also access personal information such as home addresses or phone IPs.
Google released security updates to address five vulnerabilities in the Chrome web browser, including a high-severity zero-day flaw, tracked as CVE-2021-4102, exploited in the wild.
The CVE-2021-4102 flaw is a use-after-free issue in the V8 JavaScript and WebAssembly engine, its exploitation could lead to the execution of arbitrary code or data corruption.
“Google is aware of reports that an exploit for CVE-2021-4102 exists in the wild.” reads the advisory published by Google which did not share additional info regarding these attacks.
The vulnerability was reported by an anonymous researcher on 2021-12-09.
Google has already addressed 17 zero-day vulnerabilities in Chrome this year, below is the full list:
Over 1 million companies worldwide and over 731,000 companies in the U.S. use Office 365, and though Microsoft offers no hard stats, some sources suggest there are over 90,000 Microsoft partners facilitating services and products for clients. It’s no wonder, then, that vulnerabilities in Microsoft solutions are an attractive attack vector.
So far in 2021, the 12 most notable critical Microsoft vulnerabilities fall within five major threat categories:
CISA adds Log4Shell Log4j flaw to the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog
The U.S. CISA added 13 new vulnerabilities to the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog, including Apache Log4Shell Log4j and Fortinet FortiOS issues.
Below is the list of new vulnerabilities added to the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog, which is the list of issues frequently used as attack vector by threat actors in the wild and that pose significant risk to the federal enterprise.
Red Hat Linux JBoss Seam 2 Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
6/10/2022
The CVE-2021-44228 flaw made the headlines last week, after Chinese security researcher p0rz9 publicly disclosed a Proof-of-concept exploit for the critical remote code execution zero-day vulnerability (aka Log4Shell) that affects the Apache Log4j Java-based logging library.
The impact of the issue is devastating, thousands of organizations worldwide are potentially exposed to attacks and security experts are already reported exploitation attempts in the wild.
CISA also warns of a recently disclosed arbitrary file download vulnerability in FortiOS, tracked as CVE-2021-44168, that is actively exploited.
“A download of code without integrity check vulnerability [CWE-494] in the “execute restore src-vis” command of FortiOS may allow a local authenticated attacker to download arbitrary files on the device via specially crafted update packages.” reads the advisory published by Fortinet. “Fortinet is aware of an instance where this vulnerability was abused and recommends immediately validating your systems for indicators of compromise”
