Displaying items by tag: Security

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.

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.

Earlier today we reported that the same group that hit NVIDIA and stole source code along with employee logins also hit Samsung and stole around 190GB of source code data related to how galaxy mobile devices operate. The data, according to the Lapsus$ group, covers the bootloader for the trust zone and trusted apps, how galaxy devices encrypt data and other code operating fundamentals.

IoT devices in general are the bane of most security teams. Typically, they lack basic security features and are complicated at best to keep patched. Much of this is due to the process needed to patch them and the rest of due to vendors being slow to push out the updated/patched images. To further complicate this, in the medical world you have the demand for 100% uptime and the ever-popular FDA exclusions that far too many vendors operate under. This usually means that on any given day Medical IoT devices are an attack surface waiting to be attacked.

Banking malware for mobile devices is on the rise thanks to the ubiquitous use of mobile apps for personal financial tracking and transactions. This move was almost certain to attract threat actors like a moth to a porchlight. When given the gloriously poor state of mobile anti-malware and protection it is no wonder there are so many flavors of this popping up. What is even more disappointing, is the fact that we are seeing the malware packages pushed out through legitimate app stores.

Warfare has changed little over its centuries of existence. The tools have changes, the arenas have moved from two dimensions to 3, but the concepts and execution area basically the same. You need to not only assault and occupy ground, but you must stop organized response of whoever you are attacking or defending from. If you can successfully confuse or disrupt their attack/defense, then you gain a tactical advantage on the battlefield. With the Russian invasion of Ukraine this was very clear as the country was hit with multiple cyber attacks prior to the ground assault.

WMIC or the Windows Management Instrumentation Command line is a very powerful tool. It can allow an administrator or an attacker a lot of control over a system. Because of the number of times that WMIC has been abused to take control of/or compromise a system Microsoft has been testing the removal of the WMIC component of WMI. Different sources have reported that WMIC as a commend no longer works in development builds, but the WMI process is still running on the device.

It looks like the group behind Trickbot, the Swiss Army Knife of Malware as service for Windows is shutting down the framework and infrastructure behind the “solution”. According to research groups that have been tracking the campaign the disappearance there are several factors that have led up to this. One of the most recent changes appears to be a shift in efforts to a new malware format and potentially being “acquired” by another malware operator.

We have another Web3 article today. This one covers a new NFT marketplace compromise though the use of phishing emails that tricked users into singing over their digital assets to an, as of yet, unknown attacker.

It seems that there are still some MS SQL servers that are not only exposed to the open internet but are also still using weak passwords. When this is combined with vulnerabilities and the lack of other security controls and monitoring, it allows threat actors to compromise them. This is the case in a recently observed campaign where the attackers are targeting exposed MS SQL servers and injecting Cobalt Strike.