Information Security & Occasional Forays Into Adjacent Realms
Many thanks to DEF CON 31 for publishing their terrific DefCon Conference 31 presenters content. Originating from the conference events at Caesars Forum, Flamingo, Harrah’s and Linq in Las Vegas, Nevada; via the organizations YouTube channel.
Many thanks to DEF CON 31 for publishing their terrific DefCon Conference 31 presenters content. Originating from the conference events at Caesars Forum, Flamingo, Harrah’s and Linq in Las Vegas, Nevada; via the organizations YouTube channel.
The next Fujiwhara Effect is 'slated' for April 14 2020 (tomorrow). In this scenario, the Effect is not related to cyclonic vortices adjacent to each other, but rather, the close proximaty in time, of multiple vendor announcements with multiple (per vendor) vulnerabilities to computational, internetworking and other activities. Mind you - be certain to don those nor'easter rain bonnets before crying for relief from the non-stop onslaught of vulnerability fixes on the 'nigh! Todays' Must Read.
via Dan Goodin, reporting at Ars Technica, and focusing on recently discovered Android device backdoors. Apparently, said backdoors were installed at currently unidentified manufacturer's factories prior to sale (confirmed by Google Security Engineers). Bad news for Android users... Currently, Google, Inc. (Nasdaq: GOOG) remediation plans are unclear.
Image Courtesy of Yowp
via Pierluigi Paganini, comes news of TOR leveraged scans searching for BlueKeep vulns, as those observed scans are conveyed and exiting via TOR exit nodes.
via Cyrus Farivar, writing at Ars Technica, of the apparent displeasure noted by United States District Court Judge Amy Totenberg, whilst Her Honor viewed the shenanigans being perpertrated by the State of Georgia's voting commision. Suprised? Don't be.. The centuries lomg tradition of election manipulations is coming to the fore, as the aft begins sinking under it's own weight of corruption, down south, that is. That said, the North, West and East aren't exactly doing that much better. Read Cyrus's superb reportage and weep for free, unfettered elections.
News via Jeff Baumgartner, writing at Light Reading, of the apparent remediation of a deep (and wide) hole in Comcast systems; certainly today's MustRead!
"One of the vulnerabilities uncovered by security researcher Ryan Stevenson centered on an in-home authentication portal that lets customers pay bills without signing in with their credentials." via Jeff Baumgartner, writing at Light Reading
Alert the Media! We're Going Public With The Lockout Bypass Flaw!
Liam Tung, writing at ZDNet, regales us with a brief soliloquy on Microsoft Corporation's ((NASDAQ: MSFT) unpatched Windows 10 Lockdown Bypass flaw, and news of Google's (NASDAQ:GOOG) Project Zero denial of an extension-to-fix (addressed-ever-so-nicely to Microsoft's powers-that-be) of said unpatched pernicious flaw. Microsoft required an additional 90 days to fix the issue... Must be quite busy in Redomond with the re-org and demotion (and disruption) of the Windows product line, into - fundamentally - a non-business line (should have been executed years ago).
via the comic superiority of Robert M. Lee and the superb illustration work of Jeff Haas at Little Bobby Comics
Illustration from the Kaspersky Labs Document.
Dan Goodin, writing at ArsTechnica, provides us with the surreptitious history of the malice-filled code-miscreant APT monikered Slingshot; of which, is apparently an alternatative mwthod of describing the devil's offspring in code-complete form. More, here.
"The researchers still don't know precisely how Slingshot initially infected all its targets. In several cases, however, Slingshot operators got access to routers made by Latvian manufacturer MikroTik and planted a malicious code in it." - via Dan Goodin, slaving away over a sizziling keyboard at ArsTechica
Reportedly, Harry Sintonen, empolyed at F-Secure as a security researcher, discovered during the course of his labors - a flaw in Intel's Active Management Technology (AMT) firmware. Ooops.
As is typical of Intel Corporation (Nasdaq: INTC) the firm is attempting to shirk responsability for this attack and transfer the blame onto the company's vendors, not to mention the glad-handing exhibited by the company's CEO at CES.
It's time to rein in Intel Corporation's significantly flawed software development practice (as evidenced by the output), as the ramifications for the company's vulnerability touch many - if not all - systems worldwide. Further, what else is flawed in the company's other products (for example, automotive chips, medical device systems where the firm's hardware and software reside)?
'But the latest vulnerability—discovered in July of 2017 by F-Secure security consultant Harry Sintonen and revealed by the company today in a blog post—is more of a feature than a bug. Notebook and desktop PCs with Intel AMT can be compromised in moments by someone with physical access to the computer—even bypassing BIOS passwords, Trusted Platform Module personal identification numbers, and Bitlocker disk encryption passwords—by rebooting the computer, entering its BIOS boot menu, and selecting configuration for Intel’s Management Engine BIOS Extension (MEBx).' - via Sean Gallagher - writing at Ars Technica
Via Catalin Cimpanu, writing at Bleeping Computer, comes one of today's most interesting - yet innocuous (thus far) - flaws, targeting the speaker products of both Sonos and Bose Corporation. Apparently, the flaws are of the remote exploit variety, of which, permits remote attackers to execute sounds upon command. The possibilites, therefore, are significant (considering the Children of the Script out there...). So far, the reports have noted pranking connected to the flaw.
Iain Thomson, writng at El Reg, reports on Webroot's latest SNAFU. I'll leave it to his illustrative prose to tell the tale.
Today MustRead details the secretive environment many vulnerability researchers and operatives live and labor within. Enjoy.
Well crafted reportage by David Bisson, writing at Graham Cluley's GCHQ blog, detailing a new paper published by Israel's Ben-Gurion University of the Negev's Cyber-Security Research Centers' Mordechai Guri, Yisroel Mirsky, and Yuval Elovici. The fragility of these systems are, for a reasonable person, simply astounding; especially considering the significant capabilities to deploy hardened communications infrastructures in this epoch. As always, you be the judge.
via Kate Kochetkova writing on the Kaspersky blog, comes advice on mitigating iOS tracking. Well played Ms. Kochetkova, Well Played.
News, via Dan Goodin, writing at Ars Technica, details a seven year old, pernicious bug in Xen virtualiztion wares. In which, users can exploit the bug to breakout of their local machines, thence into the underlying hypervisor layer. FYI - One high profile customer of the Xen Hypervisor is Amazon Web Services. Time to Patch, eh?
"Admittedly this is subtle bug, because there is no buggy code that could be spotted immediately. The bug emerges only if one looks at a bigger picture of logic flows (compare also QSB #09 for a somehow similar situation). On the other hand, it is really shocking that such a bug has been lurking in the core of the hypervisor for so many years. In our opinion the Xen project should rethink their coding guidelines and try to come up with practices and perhaps additional mechanisms that would not let similar flaws to plague the hypervisor ever again (assert-like mechanisms perhaps?). Otherwise the whole project makes no sense, at least to those who would like to use Xen for security-sensitive work." - via Dan Goodin, writing at Ars Technica.
Superlative post, well-crafted by the eponymous Pete Herzog (writing at Norses' [Darkmatters), elucidating the truth of vulnerability scanners. Today's Must Read.