Displaying items by tag: Patching

One of the most commonly asked questions in cybersecurity is “where do I start?” This common question shows just how overwhelmed many organizations are when faced with the reality of the threats that are out there. From ransomware to business email compromise, the threat actors certainly seem to be ahead of the implementations when it comes to securing the data that organizations are responsible for. So where should an organization start when it comes to building or optimizing their cybersecurity program?

The last couple of months have been rather busy with the identification of critical vulnerabilities. Multiple Zero-Days were found in different pieces of software including Remote Code Execution, data modification and theft, and complete compromise of other devices that require replacement rather than patching. So, with that it is not surprising that another critical flaw has been identified (and patched) in another major vendor’s devices. Fortinet has announced the release of patches for a vulnerability tracked as CVE-2023-27997.

On May 19th 2023 Barracuda disclosed that there was a critical vulnerability in their Email Security Gateway appliances. This vulnerability is tracked under CVE-2023-2868 and is listed as a remote command injection vulnerability. The flaw is present in software versions 5.1.3.001 up to 9.2.0.006 for the ESG appliances only. As this was disclosed as a Zero-Day vulnerability there was an accelerated patch release schedules with the first patches made available on May 20th.

Apple has rushed to release patches for CVE-2023-32409, CVE-2023-28204, and CVE-2023-32373 all of which are in the WebKit Browser engine and across all Apple platforms (IOS, IpadOS and macOS). These three flaws have also been seen to be actively exploited in the wild. This increases the significance of them and should be remediated as soon as possible by applying any available patches.

in the wild. The patch for this bug is one of 37 that are part of the monthly security release which covers multiple components in the popular mobile OS. This comes at a time when mobile banking malware is on the rise and there are also concerns around threat groups targeting phones to compromise them for use in MFA request responses.

Google pushed out a n Out-of-band patch for Chrome due to a high-severity on Friday (March 25th, 2022). The patch was pushed out quickly as the vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2022-1096 is being actively exploited in the wild. CVE-2022-1096 is a type confusion vulnerability that exists in the JavaScript Engine used by Chrome and was reported to Google by an Anonymous researcher last week.

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.

Cisco has announced that a series of vulnerabilities along with the associated patches that go with them for some of the Nexus Series Switches based on NX-OS. Cisco’s NX-OS is the heart of their data center line of switches like the Nexus 3k, 5500 and 5600, as well as the 6k and 9k series. These switches are often deployed inside large data centers or used as core switches for data and storage networks. Because of this large and critical deployment footprint the new flaw (tracked as CVE-2022-20650) is a rather dangerous one.

Life would not be the same without new popping up that one state level threat actor or another was attacking and compromising US defense contractors or other businesses linked to US national security and defense. The counties of origin for these actors become a blur over time, although you do see some highlighted depending on current political trends. The two most often bandied about are Russia and China with North Korea getting an honorable mention.

Google has announced the release of a new version of Chrome. The new version comes with fixes for eight vulnerabilities. Once of these vulnerabilities CVE-2022-0609, which is describes as a user-after-free vulnerability is already being exploited in the wild. This has led them to advise users to updated Chrome as soon as possible to avoid compromise. The flaws were found by Google’s own Threat Analysis Group.