Emotet, (not to be confused with Imhotep the ancient Egyptian Polymath) was originally identified in 2014 and quickly became one of the top threats of the decade. After an early start as a banking trojan, the group amassed a huge number of bots that it was able to leverage to execute attacks on targets. This bot infrastructure was then sold as a service to other groups as part of a malware-as-a-Service model. The prevalence and reach of Emotet was enough that in early 2021 the global law enforcement and cyber security community targeted Emotet’s infrastructure and people that had been identified as part of the group. It was a significant hit to the organization.

The Security Group Binarly has disclosed 16 high-severity vulnerabilities in different implementations of UEFI firmware in HP Enterprise devices. The list of affected devices includes Laptops, Desktops, POS (point-of-sale) and edge computing nodes. The vulnerabilities range in severity from 7.5 to 8.8 putting them square in the high-severity range. The discovery also may affect additional manufacturers via a reference code match that has led to AMD’s firmware driver (AgesaSmmSaveMemoryConfig). This AMD reference code means that some vulnerabilities may exist across the entire computing ecosystem.

Linux, often thought of as a more secure alternative to Microsoft, has not had an easy year. We have seen vulnerabilities that affect the iSCSI subsystem, the Extended Berkeley Packet Filter, the Polkit pkexec component bug and now two Kernel bugs. The latest one, dubbed “dirty pipe” It is a method that could allow a “local” user to overwrite read-only files including SUID flies.

Supply chain attacks are always a concern when it comes to device manufacture and distribution. If an attacker can compromise a part of the supply or management chain, they can affect a large part of the market with relatively minimal effort. The SolarWinds supply chain attack is a perfect example of this type of attack that successfully compromised multiple businesses with only one real “attack”. Now security researchers have disclosed a new group of vulnerabilities in PTC’s Axeda software that allow them to attack the devices after distribution.