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Cisco warns of security holes in its security appliances

Bugs potentially useful for rogue insiders, admin account hijackers

Jessica Lyons Hardcastle Wed 22 Jun 2022 // 20:16 UTC

Cisco has alerted customers to another four vulnerabilities in its products, including a high-severity flaw in its email and web security appliances.
The networking giant has issued a patch for that bug, tracked as CVE-2022-20664. The flaw is present in the web management interface of Cisco's Secure Email and Web Manager and Email Security Appliance in both the virtual and hardware appliances. Some earlier versions of both products, we note, have reached end of life, and so the manufacturer won't release fixes; it instead told customers to migrate to a newer version and dump the old.
This bug received a 7.7 out of 10 CVSS severity score, and Cisco noted that its security team is not aware of any in-the-wild exploitation, so far. That said, given the speed of reverse engineering, that day is likely to come.

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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.

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CISA and friends raise alarm on critical flaws in industrial equipment, infrastructure

Nearly 60 holes found affecting 'more than 30,000' machines worldwide

Jessica Lyons Hardcastle Tue 21 Jun 2022 // 04:01 UTC

Updated Fifty-six vulnerabilities – some deemed critical – have been found in industrial operational technology (OT) systems from ten global manufacturers including Honeywell, Ericsson, Motorola, and Siemens, putting more than 30,000 devices worldwide at risk, according to private security researchers.
Some of these vulnerabilities received CVSS severity scores as high as 9.8 out of 10. That is particularly bad, considering these devices are used in critical infrastructure across the oil and gas, chemical, nuclear, power generation and distribution, manufacturing, water treatment and distribution, mining and building and automation industries.
The most serious security flaws include remote code execution (RCE) and firmware vulnerabilities. If exploited, these holes could potentially allow miscreants to shut down electrical and water systems, disrupt the food supply, change the ratio of ingredients to result in toxic mixtures, and … OK, you get the idea.

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Google: How we tackled this iPhone, Android spyware

Watching people's every move and collecting their info – not on our watch, says web ads giant

Jessica Lyons Hardcastle Fri 24 Jun 2022 // 10:46 UTC

Spyware developed by Italian firm RCS Labs was used to target cellphones in Italy and Kazakhstan — in some cases with an assist from the victims' cellular network providers, according to Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG).
RCS Labs customers include law-enforcement agencies worldwide, according to the vendor's website. It's one of more than 30 outfits Google researchers are tracking that sell exploits or surveillance capabilities to government-backed groups. And we're told this particular spyware runs on both iOS and Android phones.
We understand this particular campaign of espionage involving RCS's spyware was documented last week by Lookout, which dubbed the toolkit "Hermit." We're told it is potentially capable of spying on the victims' chat apps, camera and microphone, contacts book and calendars, browser, and clipboard, and beam that info back to base. It's said that Italian authorities have used this tool in tackling corruption cases, and the Kazakh government has had its hands on it, too.

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Azure issues not adequately fixed for months, complain bug hunters

Redmond kicks off Patch Tuesday with a months-old flaw fix

Jessica Lyons Hardcastle Tue 14 Jun 2022 // 13:30 UTC

Updated Two security vendors – Orca Security and Tenable – have accused Microsoft of unnecessarily putting customers' data and cloud environments at risk by taking far too long to fix critical vulnerabilities in Azure.
In a blog published today, Orca Security researcher Tzah Pahima claimed it took Microsoft several months to fully resolve a security flaw in Azure's Synapse Analytics that he discovered in January.
And in a separate blog published on Monday, Tenable CEO Amit Yoran called out Redmond for its lack of response to – and transparency around – two other vulnerabilities that could be exploited by anyone using Azure Synapse.

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Halfords suffers a puncture in the customer details department

I like driving in my car, hope my data's not gone far

Richard Speed Thu 23 Jun 2022 // 08:30 UTC

UK automobile service and parts seller Halfords has shared the details of its customers a little too freely, according to the findings of a security researcher.
Like many, cyber security consultant Chris Hatton used Halfords to keep his car in tip-top condition, from tires through to the annual safety checks required for many UK cars.
In January, Hatton replaced a tire on his car using a service from Halfords. It's a simple enough process – pick a tire online, select a date, then wait. A helpful confirmation email arrived with a link for order tracking. A curious soul, Hatton looked at what was happening behind the scenes when clicking the link and "noticed some API calls that seemed ripe for an IDOR" [Insecure Direct Object Reference].

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Google, EFF back Cloudflare in row over pirate streams

Ban akin to 'ordering a telephone company to prevent a person from having conversations' over its lines

Jessica Lyons Hardcastle Tue 21 Jun 2022 // 09:30 UTC

Google, EFF, and the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) have filed court documents supporting Cloudflare after it was sued for refusing to block a streaming site.
Earlier this year, a handful of Israel-based media companies took Israel.tv to court, accusing it of streaming TV and movie content it had no right to distribute. The corporations — United King Film Distribution, D.B.S. Satellite Services, HOT Communication Systems, Charlton, Reshet Media and Keshet Broadcasting — won the lawsuit after Israel.tv's creators failed to show up to their hearings, and the judge ordered Israel-tv.com, Israel.tv and Sdarot.tv each pay $7,650,000 in damages.
In a more surprising move, however, the media outfits also won an injunction [PDF] in the United States in April against a slew of internet companies, among others, banning them from aiding Israel.tv in its piracy.

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If you're using older, vulnerable Cisco small biz routers, throw them out

Severe security flaw won't be fixed – as patches released this week for other bugs

Jessica Lyons Hardcastle Thu 16 Jun 2022 // 20:07 UTC

If you thought you were over the hump with Patch Tuesday then perhaps think again: Cisco has just released fixes for a bunch of flaws, two of which are not great.
First on the priority list should be a critical vulnerability in its enterprise security appliances, and the second concerns another critical bug in some of its outdated small business routers that it's not going to fix. In other words, junk your kit or somehow mitigate the risk.
Both of these received a CVSS score of 9.8 out of 10 in severity. The IT giant urged customers to patch affected security appliances ASAP if possible, and upgrade to newer hardware if you're still using an end-of-life, buggy router. We note that miscreants aren't actively exploiting either of these vulnerabilities — yet.

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Makers of ad blockers and browser privacy extensions fear the end is near

Overhaul of Chrome add-ons set for January, Google says it's for all our own good

Thomas Claburn in San Francisco Wed 8 Jun 2022 // 06:26 UTC

Special report Seven months from now, assuming all goes as planned, Google Chrome will drop support for its legacy extension platform, known as Manifest v2 (Mv2). This is significant if you use a browser extension to, for instance, filter out certain kinds of content and safeguard your privacy.
Google's Chrome Web Store is supposed to stop accepting Mv2 extension submissions sometime this month. As of January 2023, Chrome will stop running extensions created using Mv2, with limited exceptions for enterprise versions of Chrome operating under corporate policy. And by June 2023, even enterprise versions of Chrome will prevent Mv2 extensions from running.
The anticipated result will be fewer extensions and less innovation, according to several extension developers.

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Hangouts hangs up: Google chat app shuts this year

How many messaging services does this web giant need? It's gotta be over 9,000

Katyanna Quach Tue 28 Jun 2022 // 00:22 UTC

Google is winding down its messaging app Hangouts before it officially shuts in November, the web giant announced on Monday.
Users of the mobile app will see a pop-up asking them to move their conversations onto Google Chat, which is yet another one of its online services. It can be accessed via Gmail as well as its own standalone application. Next month, conversations in the web version of Hangouts will be ported over to Chat in Gmail.

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