Reg Latin scholars scrap over LOHAN's stirring motto • The Register Forums

User topics

Article topics

Log in Sign up

Other stories you might like

How refactoring code in Safari's WebKit resurrected 'zombie' security bug

Fixed in 2013, reinstated in 2016, exploited in the wild this year

Jeff Burt Tue 21 Jun 2022 // 08:31 UTC

A security flaw in Apple's Safari web browser that was patched nine years ago was exploited in the wild again some months ago – a perfect example of a "zombie" vulnerability.
That's a bug that's been patched, but for whatever reason can be abused all over again on up-to-date systems and devices – or a bug closely related to a patched one.
In a write-up this month, Maddie Stone, a top researcher on Google's Project Zero team, shared details of a Safari vulnerability that folks realized in January this year was being exploited in the wild. This remote-code-execution flaw could be abused by a specially crafted website, for example, to run spyware on someone's device when viewed in their browser.

Continue reading
Apple patched critical flaws in macOS Monterey but not in Big Sur nor Catalina

About 35-40% of iGiant's desktop OS installs potentially vulnerable, says Intego

Thomas Claburn in San Francisco Wed 6 Apr 2022 // 07:40 UTC

Apple last week patched two actively exploited vulnerabilities in macOS Monterey yet has left users of older supported versions of its desktop operating system unprotected.
In a blog post on Tuesday, security biz Intego said fixes applied to address CVE-2022-22675 (AppleAVD bug) and CVE-2022-22674 (Intel Graphics Driver bug) in macOS Monterey were not backported to macOS Big Sur or macOS Catalina.
The AppleAVD issue is unpatched for macOS Big Sur, said Joshua Long, chief security analyst for Intego, while Catalina isn't affected because it lacks the AppleAVD component for decoding audio and video. The Intel Graphics Driver flaw, he said, looks like it affects both Big Sur and Catalina.

Continue reading
Adobe warns of second critical security hole in Adobe Commerce, Magento

As sanctioned Russian infosec firm says it has working exploit code

Gareth Corfield Fri 18 Feb 2022 // 19:20 UTC

Adobe has put out a warning about another critical security bug affecting its Magento/Adobe Commerce product – and IT pros need to install a second patch after an initial update earlier this week failed to fully plug the first one.
You need to apply both patches, in order.
The new vuln has also been assigned a severity rating of the 9.8 on the CVSS scale – the same as its predecessor, for which Adobe issued an out-of-bounds patch earlier in the week. It's tracked as CVE-2022-24087 and – like the earlier vuln, CVE-2022-24086 – impacts both Magento Open Source and Adobe Commerce.

Continue reading
VMware patches critical guest-to-host vulnerabilities

Time to fix code like it's 2020

Gareth Corfield Thu 17 Feb 2022 // 21:13 UTC

In an advisory this week, VMware alerted users to guest-to-host vulnerabilities in the XHCI and UHCI USB controllers in its ESXi hypervisor, plus an important flaw fixed in NSX Data Center for vSphere.
In all, five vulnerabilities were discovered in VMware's ESXi, Workstation, Cloud Foundation (ESXi), and Fusion during the Tianfu Cup 2021, a Chinese vulnerability competition, by the country's Kunlun Lab. Bugs that Kunlun discovered were disclosed privately to VMware – though last year China passed a new law ordering security researchers to reveal findings to the country's Ministry of Public Security at least two days before anyone else.
The vendor said it hadn't seen any evidence the competition's findings had been exploited in the wild. Patches have been issued, now it's up to admins to schedule them. The vulnerabilities range from use-after-free() and double-fetch flaws that can be exploited to execute code on the host, to an old-fashioned denial of service (DoS). The full list for ESXi, Workstation, Cloud Foundation, and Fusion is:

Continue reading
Microsoft patches Y2K-like bug that borked on-prem Exchange Server

Happy New Year. Welcome back! Now apply this patch – which Microsoft warns isn't easy – if you want email to work

Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor Mon 3 Jan 2022 // 23:59 UTC

Microsoft has kicked off 2022 by issuing a patch for Exchange Server 2016 and 2019, which both possessed a “latent date issue” that saw emails queued up instead of being dispatched to inboxes.
“The problem relates to a date check failure with the change of the new year,” states a January 1st post to the Exchange Blog.
Exchange’s malware scanning engine is the source of the problem, as Exchange checks the version of that software and then tries to write the date into a variable. But that variable’s maximum value is 2,147,483,647 and the value Exchange tries to write - 2,201,010,001, to reflect the date of January 1st, 2022, at midnight – exceeds the variable’s maximum threshold.

Continue reading
Patch now? Why enterprise exploits are still partying like it's 1999

Am I only dreaming, or is this burning an Eternal Blue?

Davey Winder Wed 8 Sep 2021 // 09:13 UTC

Feature Some vulnerabilities remain unreported for the longest time. The 12-year-old Dell SupportAssist remote code execution (RCE) flaw – which was finally unearthed earlier this year – would be one example.
Others, however, have not only been long since reported and had patches released, but continue to pose a threat to enterprises. A joint advisory from the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), published in late July, listed the top 30 publicly known vulnerabilities that are routinely being exploited by threat actors. Many of these are a good few years old, including one Microsoft Office RCE that was patched in 2017 but had been around since the year 2000.
Eoin Keary, CEO and founder of Edgescan, told The Register that the oldest common vulnerability discovered in its latest quarterly vulnerability scans report (CVE-1999-0517, impacting Simple Network Management Protocol) dated back to 1999. Which raises the question, why are threat actors being allowed to party like it's, um... 1999?

Continue reading
Expired cert breaks Windows 11 snipping tool, emoji panel, S Mode features, other stuff

And we're talking about shipped code, not some Insider beta, here

Iain Thomson in San Francisco Thu 4 Nov 2021 // 20:00 UTC

It has proved an unfortunate Halloween for Microsoft, with the ghost of an expired certificate haunting Windows 11 users. The upshot is: various built-in programs may stop working properly or cannot be opened at all.
Redmond yesterday said "some users" are affected, so you may or may not notice the blunder. This all applies to at least Windows 11 version 21H2.
The cryptographic cert at the heart of this affair ran out at the end of October leading to failures this month, according to Microsoft: "Starting on November 1, 2021, some users might be unable to open or use certain built-in Windows apps or parts of some built-in apps. This is caused by an issue with a Microsoft digital certificate, which expired October 31, 2021."

Continue reading
SolarWinds issues software update – one it wrote for a change – to patch hole exploited in the wild

'Single threat actor' already abusing RCE flaw, Microsoft reports

Iain Thomson in San Francisco Mon 12 Jul 2021 // 19:44 UTC

SolarWinds has issued an emergency patch after a critical security hole in its Serv-U Managed File Transfer and Serv-U Secure FTP was spotted being exploited in the wild.
The vulnerability, discovered by Microsoft's Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) and Offensive Security Research teams, can be exploited by an attacker to achieve remote code execution, and is present in Serv-U version 15.2.3 HF1 and all prior builds. The Redmond crew also said a "single threat actor" was abusing the programming blunder (CVE-2021-35211) though it's not known how many customers are affected.
"This attack is a Return Oriented Programming (ROP) attack," said SolarWinds in an advisory. "When exploited, the vulnerability causes the Serv-U product to throw an exception and then intercepts the exception handling code to run commands. Please note, several reasons exist for exceptions to be thrown, so an exception itself is not necessarily an indicator of attack."

Continue reading
Partial beer print horror as Microsoft's printer bug fix, er, doesn't

Bugs, patchually: Just when you thought it was safe to print from Windows

Richard Speed Thu 18 Mar 2021 // 19:14 UTC

Updated Microsoft continues to demonstrate its impressive commitment to Windows quality by admitting the patch it released to patch the patch that broke printing was, er, itself broken.
As a reminder, a fresh security update dropped from Microsoft's Windows Update orifice last week that left some Windows 10 users unable to print. Worse, a screen of deathly blue was flashed when a printing operation was attempted – a step up from the error message seen after last year's mishap.
With impressive speed, Microsoft hurried out an out-of-band optional patch to deal with the affected Windows 10 versions: KB5001567 for Windows 10 2004 and 20H2; KB5001566 for Windows 10 1909; KB5001568 for 1809 and KB5001565 for 1803.

Continue reading
Apple patches macOS flaw exploited by malware to secretly snap screenshots

Bug can also be abused to record audio and video, access files – and iOS, iPadOS updated, too

Iain Thomson in San Francisco Mon 24 May 2021 // 21:43 UTC

Apple has patched a hole in macOS that has been exploited by malware to secretly take screenshots on victims' Macs.
The security flaw can also be potentially abused to access files and record video and audio from the computer. The iGiant has also released iOS and iPadOS 14.6, which fixes 43 CVE-listed security flaws and adding a bunch of user-friendly UI tweaks.

Continue reading

ABOUT US

MORE CONTENT

SITUATION PUBLISHING

The Register - Independent news and views for the tech community. Part of Situation Publishing

SIGN UP TO OUR DAILY NEWSLETTER

Biting the hand that feeds IT © 1998–2022

Do not sell my personal information Cookies Privacy Ts&Cs