IT Security Newsletter

IT Security Newsletter - 10/12/2022

Written by Cadre | Wed, Oct 12, 2022

Election workers in battleground states faced onslaught of malicious emails, researchers say

County election workers in Arizona and Pennsylvania were inundated with a "surge" in malicious emails ahead of those states' August primaries, security researchers said Wednesday, highlighting the ongoing threat facing election officials weeks before contentious midterms. The malicious activity, which included password theft attempts and efforts to deliver malware via poisoned links, is particularly concerning. READ MORE...

How Wi-Fi spy drones snooped on financial firm

Modified off-the-shelf drones have been found carrying wireless network-intrusion kit in a very unlikely place. The idea of using consumer-oriented drones for hacking has been explored over the past decade at security conferences like Black Hat 2016, in both the US and in Europe. Naomi Wu, a DIY tech enthusiast, demonstrated a related project called Screaming Fist in 2017. And in 2013, security researcher Samy Kamkar demonstrated his SkyJack drone, which used a Raspberry Pi to take over other drones via Wi-Fi. READ MORE...

Krebs on Security: Microsoft Patch Tuesday, October 2022 Edition

Microsoft today released updates to fix at least 85 security holes in its Windows operating systems and related software, including a new zero-day vulnerability in all supported versions of Windows that is being actively exploited. However, noticeably absent from this month's Patch Tuesday are any updates to address a pair of zero-day flaws being exploited this past month in Microsoft Exchange Server. READ MORE...

SAP Patches Critical Vulnerabilities in Commerce, Manufacturing Execution Products

German enterprise software maker SAP has released 15 new security notes on its October 2022 Security Patch Day, including two 'hot news' notes dealing with critical vulnerabilities. The company also updated two previously released security notes. The most severe of these issues is CVE-2022-39802 (CVSS score of 9.9), which is described as a file path traversal in Manufacturing Execution. The bug impacts Work Instruction Viewer and Visual Test and Repair. READ MORE...

ICS Patch Tuesday: Siemens, Schneider Electric Release 19 New Security Advisories

Industrial giants Siemens and Schneider Electric have released a total of 19 security advisories for the October 2022 Patch Tuesday. The advisories cover 36 vulnerabilities affecting their ICS products. Siemens has released 15 advisories that cover two dozen security holes. The most important of them appears to be CVE-2022-38465, which is related to a global cryptographic key not being properly protected. READ MORE...

Patch Tuesday: Critical Flaws in ColdFusion, Adobe Commerce

Software maker Adobe on Tuesday released security patches for 29 documented vulnerabilities across multiple enterprise-facing products and warned that hackers could exploit these bugs to take complete control of vulnerable machines. As part of its scheduled Patch Tuesday release cycle, Adobe warned the vulnerabilities could expose both Windows and macOS users to arbitrary code execution, arbitrary file system write, security feature bypass and privilege escalation attacks. READ MORE...

Google Forms abused in new COVID-19 phishing wave in the U.S.

COVID-19-themed phishing messages are once again spiking in the U.S. following a prolonged summer hiatus that appears to be over. According to a report by email security company INKY shared with BleepingComputer before publication, the malspam volumes have doubled in September compared to the previous three months and are set to rise even more. In the latest attacks, phishing emails impersonate the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) and abuse Google Forms to host phishing pages. READ MORE...

An 18 year scam odyssey of stranded astronauts

There is a semi-mythical scam which comes around every couple of years, like some sort of digital bad luck version of Halley's Comet. Instead of flood, famine, and the death of Kings, it brings confusion, some level of hilarity, and a slice of sheer disbelief. Unfortunately it also threatens to clean out somebody's bank account. While I'm not aware of someone having lost money to this scam previously, it struck gold in 2022. An arrow fired roughly 18 years ago has finally found its mark. READ MORE...

VMware vCenter Server bug disclosed last year still not patched

VMware informed customers today that vCenter Server 8.0 (the latest version) is still waiting for a patch to address a high-severity privilege escalation vulnerability disclosed in November 2021. This security flaw (CVE-2021-22048) was found by CrowdStrike's Yaron Zinar and Sagi Sheinfeld in vCenter Server's IWA (Integrated Windows Authentication) mechanism, and it also affects VMware's Cloud Foundation hybrid cloud platform deployments. READ MORE...

AI and Residual Finger Heat Could Be a Password Cracker's Latest Tools

Password-cracking and guessing attempts are successful enough as it is to put more than a little gray in the hair of experienced cybersecurity professionals. Now new research shows even more effective cracking attempts could be perpetrated by attackers equipped with a cheap thermal camera and some simple deep-learning models. The AI-driven attacks were conceptualized and refined by Dr. Mohamed Khamis of the University of Glasgow School of Computing Science and his colleagues. READ MORE...

  • ...in 1810, the citizens of Munich, Germany hold the first Oktoberfest.
  • ...in 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt officially renames the "Executive Mansion" to the White House.
  • ...in 1968, actor Hugh Jackman ("X-Men", "The Prestige") is born in Sydney, Australia.
  • ...in 1979, Douglas Adams' comedic science fiction novel "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" is published.