The developers of the OpenSSH implementation of Secure Shell have announced their intention to drop support for SHA-1 in a ‘near future release.’ OpenSSH is used by millions of system administrators to securely access networked systems. OpenSSH supports various encryption algorithms and the decision to drop support for SHA-1 comes as recent research demonstrates itRead more
Blog
In June 2020 Microsoft’s Patch Tuesday fixes a record 129 defects and vulnerabilities in its software – with a further 19 patches in the June Microsoft Office patch bundle. This continues a recent trend of ever-increasing numbers of patches included in the monthly updates from Microsoft (the two previous highest number of patches were inRead more
April’s patch Tuesday release from Microsoft includes fixes for three zero-day vulnerabilities in Windows that are under active attack. CVE-2020-1020 is a flaw in the Windows Adobe Type Manager Library. According to Microsoft: For all systems except Windows 10, an attacker who successfully exploited the vulnerability could execute code remotely. For systems running Windows 10,Read more
Server hardening is a set of disciplines and techniques which improve the security of an ‘off the shelf’ server. Server Hardening is requirement of security frameworks such as PCI-DSS and is typically included when organisations adopt ISO27001. What is the attack surface The aim of server hardening is to reduce the attack surface ofRead more
Microsoft warns that attackers are targeting two zero-day remote code execution vulnerabilities that exist in all versions of Windows – and a fix is not expected until the April patch Tuesday. The vulnerabilities exist in the Adobe Type Manager library which is a standard Windows component used primarily by Windows Explorer to display previews ofRead more
Microsoft has released a patch to fix a remote code execution flaw in the SMB protocol affecting Windows 10 PC and their servers. SMB is used by Active Directory, for network file sharing and some printers. Microsoft have published a security advisory which details the scope of the flaw. The problem is the way the SMBv3Read more
A remote code execution vulnerability has been discovered in all version of the Point-to-Point Protocol included on Linux systems for the last 17 years. The vulnerability allows an unauthenticated attacker to send a specially crafted packet to the PPP daemon (pppd), force a buffer overflow and execute arbitrary code. The PPP protocol is used forRead more
Microsoft has released a patch to a remote code execution vulnerability in Exchange server which is being actively targeted. CVE-2020-0688 is a flaw in the installation procedure resulting in all Exchange Servers using the same cryptographic keys for ASP.NET ViewState data. A detailed write-up by the Zero Day Initiative demonstrates the flaw in action. In summary:Read more
Ragnarok ransomware is leveraging unpatched Citrix ADC servers and Windows computers to attack its victims. Citrix have now released a patch for CVE-2019-19781 and made it available to all clients – regardless of the status of their support contract. However, unpatched Citrix systems are being actively targeted with Ragnarok according to security firm Fireye. CVE-2019-19781 isRead more
In recent years the main vendors of the operating systems and databases that run our businesses, schools and governments have made significant strides to provide a reliable stream of patches and upgrades which are easy to install or even automatically installed. Microsoft’s Patch Tuesday has been emulated by other vendors including Adobe and SAP. TheseRead more
