Many network security cameras made by Sony could be taken over by hackers and infected with botnet malware if their firmware is not updated to the latest version.Researchers from SEC Consult have found two backdoor accounts that exist in 80 models of professional Sony security cameras, mainly used by companies and government agencies given their high price.One set of hard-coded credentials is in the Web interface and allows a remote attacker to send requests that would enable the Telnet service on the camera, the SEC Consult researchers said in an advisory Tuesday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Many network security cameras made by Sony could be taken over by hackers and infected with botnet malware if their firmware is not updated to the latest version.Researchers from SEC Consult have found two backdoor accounts that exist in 80 models of professional Sony security cameras, mainly used by companies and government agencies given their high price.One set of hard-coded credentials is in the Web interface and allows a remote attacker to send requests that would enable the Telnet service on the camera, the SEC Consult researchers said in an advisory Tuesday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A month before Apple is expected to enforce stricter security requirements for app communications in iOS, enterprise developers don't seem ready to embrace them, a new study shows.The study was performed by security firm Appthority on the most common 200 apps installed on iOS devices in enterprise environments. The researchers looked at how well these apps conform to Apple's App Transport Security (ATS) requirements.ATS was first introduced and was enabled by default in iOS 9. It forces all apps to communicate with Internet servers using encrypted HTTPS (HTTP over SSL/TLS) connections and ensures that only industry-standard encryption protocols and ciphers without known weaknesses are used. For example, SSL version 3 is not allowed and neither is the RC4 stream cipher, due to known vulnerabilities.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A month before Apple is expected to enforce stricter security requirements for app communications in iOS, enterprise developers don't seem ready to embrace them, a new study shows.The study was performed by security firm Appthority on the most common 200 apps installed on iOS devices in enterprise environments. The researchers looked at how well these apps conform to Apple's App Transport Security (ATS) requirements.ATS was first introduced and was enabled by default in iOS 9. It forces all apps to communicate with Internet servers using encrypted HTTPS (HTTP over SSL/TLS) connections and ensures that only industry-standard encryption protocols and ciphers without known weaknesses are used. For example, SSL version 3 is not allowed and neither is the RC4 stream cipher, due to known vulnerabilities.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
If you've encountered errors over the past month when trying to access HTTPS-enabled websites on your computer or Android phone, it might have been due to a bug in Chrome.The bug affected the validation for some SSL certificates issued by Symantec, one of the world's largest certificate authorities, as well as by GeoTrust and Thawte, two CAs that Symantec also controls.The bug was introduced in Chrome version 53, but also affected the Android WebView component that Android apps use to display Web content, said Rick Andrews, senior technical director at Symantec in a blog post Friday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
If you've encountered errors over the past month when trying to access HTTPS-enabled websites on your computer or Android phone, it might have been due to a bug in Chrome.The bug affected the validation for some SSL certificates issued by Symantec, one of the world's largest certificate authorities, as well as by GeoTrust and Thawte, two CAs that Symantec also controls.The bug was introduced in Chrome version 53, but also affected the Android WebView component that Android apps use to display Web content, said Rick Andrews, senior technical director at Symantec in a blog post Friday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Two researchers claim to have found a way to bypass the activation lock feature in iOS that's supposed to prevent anyone from using an iPhone or iPad marked as lost by its owner.The first report came Sunday from an Indian security researcher named Hemanth Joseph, who started investigating possible bypasses after being confronted with a locked iPad he acquired from eBay.The activation lock gets enabled automatically when users turn on the Find My iPhone feature via iCloud. It links the device to their Apple IDs and prevents anyone else from accessing the device without entering the associated password.One of the few things allowed from the activation lock screen is connecting the device to a Wi-Fi network, including manually configuring one. Hemanth had the idea of trying to crash the service that enforces the lock screen by entering very long strings of characters in the WPA2-Enterprise username and password fields.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Two researchers claim to have found a way to bypass the activation lock feature in iOS that's supposed to prevent anyone from using an iPhone or iPad marked as lost by its owner.The first report came Sunday from an Indian security researcher named Hemanth Joseph, who started investigating possible bypasses after being confronted with a locked iPad he acquired from eBay.The activation lock gets enabled automatically when users turn on the Find My iPhone feature via iCloud. It links the device to their Apple IDs and prevents anyone else from accessing the device without entering the associated password.One of the few things allowed from the activation lock screen is connecting the device to a Wi-Fi network, including manually configuring one. Hemanth had the idea of trying to crash the service that enforces the lock screen by entering very long strings of characters in the WPA2-Enterprise username and password fields.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Poor implementation of encryption in a popular Android remote management application exposes millions of users to data theft and remote code execution attacks.According to researchers from mobile security firm Zimperium, the AirDroid screen sharing and remote control application sends authentication information encrypted with a hard-coded key. This information could allow man-in-the-middle attackers to push out malicious AirDroid add-on updates, which would then gain the permissions of the app itself.AirDroid has access to a device's contacts, location information, text messages, photos, call logs, dialer, camera, microphone and the contents of the SD card. It can also perform in-app purchases, change system settings, disable the screen lock, change network connectivity and much more.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Poor implementation of encryption in a popular Android remote management application exposes millions of users to data theft and remote code execution attacks.According to researchers from mobile security firm Zimperium, the AirDroid screen sharing and remote control application sends authentication information encrypted with a hard-coded key. This information could allow man-in-the-middle attackers to push out malicious AirDroid add-on updates, which would then gain the permissions of the app itself.AirDroid has access to a device's contacts, location information, text messages, photos, call logs, dialer, camera, microphone and the contents of the SD card. It can also perform in-app purchases, change system settings, disable the screen lock, change network connectivity and much more.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
At a time when the size of distributed denial-of-service attacks has reached unprecedented levels, researchers have found a new attack technique in the wild that allows a single laptop to take down high-bandwidth enterprise firewalls.The attack, dubbed BlackNurse, involves sending Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) packets of a particular type and code. ICMP is commonly used for the ping network diagnostic utility, and attacks that try to overload a system with ping messages -- known as ping floods -- use ICMP Type 8 Code 0 packets.BlackNurse uses ICMP Type 3 (Destination Unreachable) Code 3 (Port Unreachable) packets instead and some firewalls consume a lot of CPU resources when processing them.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
At a time when the size of distributed denial-of-service attacks has reached unprecedented levels, researchers have found a new attack technique in the wild that allows a single laptop to take down high-bandwidth enterprise firewalls.The attack, dubbed BlackNurse, involves sending Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) packets of a particular type and code. ICMP is commonly used for the ping network diagnostic utility, and attacks that try to overload a system with ping messages -- known as ping floods -- use ICMP Type 8 Code 0 packets.BlackNurse uses ICMP Type 3 (Destination Unreachable) Code 3 (Port Unreachable) packets instead and some firewalls consume a lot of CPU resources when processing them.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
At a time when the size of distributed denial-of-service attacks has reached unprecedented levels, researchers have found a new attack technique in the wild that allows a single laptop to take down high-bandwidth enterprise firewalls.The attack, dubbed BlackNurse, involves sending Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) packets of a particular type and code. ICMP is commonly used for the ping network diagnostic utility, and attacks that try to overload a system with ping messages -- known as ping floods -- use ICMP Type 8 Code 0 packets.BlackNurse uses ICMP Type 3 (Destination Unreachable) Code 3 (Port Unreachable) packets instead and some firewalls consume a lot of CPU resources when processing them.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In a perfect example of how public wireless networks can be dangerous for privacy and security, an Israeli hacker showed that he could have taken over the free Wi-Fi network of an entire city.On his way home from work one day, Amihai Neiderman, the head of research at Israeli cybersecurity firm Equus Technologies, spotted a wireless hotspot that he hadn't seen before. What made it unusual was that it was in an area with no buildings.It turned out that the hotspot he saw, advertised as "FREE_TLV," was part of the citywide free Wi-Fi network set up by the local administration of Tel Aviv, Israel. This made Neiderman wonder: How secure is it?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In a perfect example of how public wireless networks can be dangerous for privacy and security, an Israeli hacker showed that he could have taken over the free Wi-Fi network of an entire city.On his way home from work one day, Amihai Neiderman, the head of research at Israeli cybersecurity firm Equus Technologies, spotted a wireless hotspot that he hadn't seen before. What made it unusual was that it was in an area with no buildings.It turned out that the hotspot he saw, advertised as "FREE_TLV," was part of the citywide free Wi-Fi network set up by the local administration of Tel Aviv, Israel. This made Neiderman wonder: How secure is it?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In a perfect example of how public wireless networks can be dangerous for privacy and security, an Israeli hacker showed that he could have taken over the free Wi-Fi network of an entire city.On his way home from work one day, Amihai Neiderman, the head of research at Israeli cybersecurity firm Equus Technologies, spotted a wireless hotspot that he hadn't seen before. What made it unusual was that it was in an area with no buildings.It turned out that the hotspot he saw, advertised as "FREE_TLV," was part of the citywide free Wi-Fi network set up by the local administration of Tel Aviv, Israel. This made Neiderman wonder: How secure is it?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft has patched 68 vulnerabilities in Windows, Office, Edge, Internet Explorer and SQL Server, two of which have already been exploited by attackers and three that have been publicly disclosed.The patches are covered in 14 security bulletins, one dedicated to Adobe Flash Player which is upgraded through Windows Update in Windows 10 and 8.1. Six of the bulletins are rated critical and eight are rated important.Administrators should prioritize the Windows patches in the MS16-135 bulletin, because they address a zero-day vulnerability that's already being exploited by a group of attackers known in the security industry as Fancy Bear, APT28 or Strontium.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft has patched 68 vulnerabilities in Windows, Office, Edge, Internet Explorer and SQL Server, two of which have already been exploited by attackers and three that have been publicly disclosed.The patches are covered in 14 security bulletins, one dedicated to Adobe Flash Player which is upgraded through Windows Update in Windows 10 and 8.1. Six of the bulletins are rated critical and eight are rated important.Administrators should prioritize the Windows patches in the MS16-135 bulletin, because they address a zero-day vulnerability that's already being exploited by a group of attackers known in the security industry as Fancy Bear, APT28 or Strontium.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Adobe Systems has released scheduled security patches for its widely used Flash Player software as well as the Adobe Connect web conferencing platform, which is popular in enterprise environments.The Flash Player security updates fix nine critical vulnerabilities that could be exploited remotely to execute malicious code on computers. All of them were privately reported by researchers through Trend Micro's Zero Day Initiative, an exploit acquisition program.Users should upgrade to Flash Player 23.0.0.207 for Windows and Mac and to Flash Player 11.2.202.644 for Linux. The Flash Player builds bundled with Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer 11 will be upgraded automatically through those browsers' update mechanisms.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Adobe Systems has released scheduled security patches for its widely used Flash Player software as well as the Adobe Connect web conferencing platform, which is popular in enterprise environments.The Flash Player security updates fix nine critical vulnerabilities that could be exploited remotely to execute malicious code on computers. All of them were privately reported by researchers through Trend Micro's Zero Day Initiative, an exploit acquisition program.Users should upgrade to Flash Player 23.0.0.207 for Windows and Mac and to Flash Player 11.2.202.644 for Linux. The Flash Player builds bundled with Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer 11 will be upgraded automatically through those browsers' update mechanisms.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Lucian Constantin