Vulnerabilities & Exploits

A look into the threat landscape during the third quarter of 2014 reveals the loopholes and vulnerabilities in often overlooked targets such as routers and PoS systems that were used as attack vectors.

Microsoft has released an out-of-band security bulletin (MS14-068) that addresses a vulnerability in various versions of Windows, stating that the vulnerability is already being used in “limited, targeted attacks”.

Microsoft released 16 security updates during its Patch Tuesday release for November 2014, including one for the Windows OLE Automation Array Remote Code Execution Vulnerability that affects almost all Windows versions.

A new Shellshock attack targeting SMTP servers has been discovered. Attackers used email to deliver the exploit, which downloads and executes an IRC Bot.

Zero-day exploits aren't the only exploits used in the targeted attack landscape. In the first half of 2014, we also found out that attackers still heavily target older vulnerabilities.

We typically expect to see at least three to four zero-day vulnerabilities a year. October 2014 is proving to be an exception to the rule as three zero-day vulnerabilities have already been exploited within the month.

Despite the availability of fixes related to the Sandworm vulnerability (CVE-2014-4114), new attacks related to this flaw are still being spotted. These attacks contain a new routine that could prevent detection.

A recent investigation revealed that the Sandworm zero day exploit could likely be used to target GE Intelligent Platform CIMPLICITY users. Find out what it does and how you can safeguard your systems against this emerging attack.

The term “secure” can only mean so much, especially in the case of the widely-used Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol version 3.0, a 15-year old design Google found to have a major flaw that possibly affects millions of Internet users.