Cloud security | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

In IT environments, some secrets are managed well and some fly under the radar. Here's a quick checklist of what kinds of secrets companies typically manage, including one type they should manage: Passwords [x] TLS certificates [x] Accounts [x] SSH keys ??? The secrets listed above are typically secured with privileged access management (PAM) solutions or similar. Yet, most traditional PAM vendors hardly talk about SSH key management. The reason is simple: they don't have the technology to do it properly.  We can prove it. All our SSH key management customers have had a traditional PAM deployed, but they realized that they couldn't manage SSH keys with it. At best, traditional PAMs can discover, let alone manage, 20% of all keys. So, what's the fuss about SSH keys? SSH keys are access credentials in the Secure Shell (SSH) protocol. In many ways, they're just like passwords but functionally different. On top of that, keys tend to outnumber passwords, especially in long-standi

Ivanti has revealed that a critical security flaw impacting Cloud Service Appliance (CSA) has come under active exploitation in the wild. The new vulnerability, assigned the CVE identifier CVE-2024-8963, carries a CVSS score of 9.4 out of a maximum of 10.0. It was "incidentally addressed" by the company as part of CSA 4.6 Patch 519 and CSA 5.0. "Path Traversal in the Ivanti CSA before 4.6 Patch 519 allows a remote unauthenticated attacker to access restricted functionality," the company said in a Thursday bulletin. It also noted that the flaw could be chained with CVE-2024-8190 (CVSS score: 7.2), permitting an attacker to bypass admin authentication and execute arbitrary commands on the appliance.  Ivanti has further warned that it's "aware of a limited number of customers who have been exploited by this vulnerability," days after it disclosed active exploitation attempts targeting CVE-2024-8190. This indicates that the threat actors behind th

For years, securing a company's systems was synonymous with securing its "perimeter." There was what was safe "inside" and the unsafe outside world. We built sturdy firewalls and deployed sophisticated detection systems, confident that keeping the barbarians outside the walls kept our data and systems safe. The problem is that we no longer operate within the confines of physical on-prem installations and controlled networks. Data and applications now reside in distributed cloud environments and data centers, accessed by users and devices connecting from anywhere on the planet. The walls have crumbled, and the perimeter has dissolved, opening the door to a new battlefield: identity . Identity is at the center of what the industry has praised as the new gold standard of enterprise security: "zero trust." In this paradigm, explicit trust becomes mandatory for any interactions between systems, and no implicit trust shall subsist. Every access request, regardless of its origin,

The cryptojacking operation known as TeamTNT has likely resurfaced as part of a new campaign targeting Virtual Private Server (VPS) infrastructures based on the CentOS operating system. "The initial access was accomplished via a Secure Shell (SSH) brute force attack on the victim's assets, during which the threat actor uploaded a malicious script," Group-IB researchers Vito Alfano and Nam Le Phuong said in a Wednesday report. The malicious script, the Singaporean cybersecurity company noted, is responsible for disabling security features, deleting logs, terminating cryptocurrency mining processes, and inhibiting recovery efforts. The attack chains ultimately pave the way for the deployment of the Diamorphine rootkit to conceal malicious processes, while also setting up persistent remote access to the compromised host. The campaign has been attributed to TeamTNT with moderate confidence, citing similarities in the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) observed

GitLab has released patches to address a critical flaw impacting Community Edition (CE) and Enterprise Edition (EE) that could result in an authentication bypass. The vulnerability is rooted in the ruby-saml library (CVE-2024-45409, CVSS score: 10.0), which could allow an attacker to log in as an arbitrary user within the vulnerable system. It was addressed by the maintainers last week. The problem as a result of the library not properly verifying the signature of the SAML Response. SAML, short for Security Assertion Markup Language, is a protocol that enables single sign-on (SSO) and exchange of authentication and authorization data across multiple apps and websites.  "An unauthenticated attacker with access to any signed SAML document (by the IdP) can thus forge a SAML Response/Assertion with arbitrary contents, according to a security advisory . "This would allow the attacker to log in as arbitrary user within the vulnerable system." It's worth noting the fl

When you connect your organization's Google Drive account to ChatGPT, you grant ChatGPT extensive permissions for not only your personal files, but resources across your entire shared drive. As you might imagine, this introduces an array of cybersecurity challenges. This post outlines how to see ChatGPT activity natively in the Google Workspace admin console, and how Nudge Security can provide full visibility into all genAI integrations. Since launching ChatGPT in 2022, OpenAI has defied expectations with a steady stream of product announcements and enhancements. One such announcement came on May 16, 2024, and for most consumers, it probably felt innocuous. Titled  "Improvements to data analysis in ChatGPT," the post outlines how users can add files directly from Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive. It's worth mentioning that other genAI tools like Google AI Studio and Claude Enterprise have also added similar capabilities recently. Pretty great, right? Maybe.‍ When you connec

A now-patched critical security flaw impacting Google Cloud Platform (GCP) Composer could have been exploited to achieve remote code execution on cloud servers by means of a supply chain attack technique called dependency confusion. The vulnerability has been codenamed CloudImposer by Tenable Research. "The vulnerability could have allowed an attacker to hijack an internal software dependency that Google pre-installs on each Google Cloud Composer pipeline-orchestration tool," security researcher Liv Matan said in a report shared with The Hacker News. Dependency confusion (aka substitution attack), which was first documented by security researcher Alex Birsan in February 2021, refers to a type of software supply chain compromise in which a package manager is tricked into pulling a malicious package from a public repository instead of the intended file of the same name from an internal repository. So, a threat actor could stage a large-scale supply chain attack by publ

Ivanti has revealed that a newly patched security flaw in its Cloud Service Appliance (CSA) has come under active exploitation in the wild. The high-severity vulnerability in question is CVE-2024-8190 (CVSS score: 7.2), which allows remote code execution under certain circumstances. "An OS command injection vulnerability in Ivanti Cloud Services Appliance versions 4.6 Patch 518 and before allows a remote authenticated attacker to obtain remote code execution," Ivanti noted in an advisory released earlier this week. "The attacker must have admin level privileges to exploit this vulnerability." The flaw impacts Ivanti CSA 4.6, which has currently reached end-of-life status, requiring that customers upgrade to a supported version going forward. That said, it has been addressed in CSA 4.6 Patch 519. "With the end-of-life status this is the last fix that Ivanti will backport for this version," the Utah-based IT software company added. "Customers mus

British authorities on Thursday announced the arrest of a 17-year-old male in connection with a cyber attack affecting Transport for London (TfL). "The 17-year-old male was detained on suspicion of Computer Misuse Act offenses in relation to the attack, which was launched on TfL on 1 September," the U.K. National Crime Agency (NCA) said . The teenager, who's from Walsall, is said to have been arrested on September 5, 2024, following an investigation that was launched in the incident's aftermath. The law enforcement agency said the unnamed individual was questioned and subsequently let go on bail. "Attacks on public infrastructure such as this can be hugely disruptive and lead to severe consequences for local communities and national systems," Deputy Director Paul Foster, head of the NCA's National Cyber Crime Unit, said. "The swift response by TfL following the incident has enabled us to act quickly, and we are grateful for their continued co

Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered a new malware campaign targeting Linux environments to conduct illicit cryptocurrency mining and deliver botnet malware. The activity, which specifically singles out the Oracle Weblogic server, is designed to deliver a malware strain dubbed Hadooken , according to cloud security firm Aqua. "When Hadooken is executed, it drops a Tsunami malware and deploys a crypto miner," security researcher Assaf Moran said . The attack chains exploit known security vulnerabilities and misconfigurations, such as weak credentials, to obtain an initial foothold and execute arbitrary code on susceptible instances. This is accomplished by launching two nearly-identical payloads, one written in Python and the other, a shell script, both of which are responsible for retrieving the Hadooken malware from a remote server (" 89.185.85[.]102 " or " 185.174.136[.]204 "). "In addition, the shell script version attempts to iterate ov

GitLab on Wednesday released security updates to address 17 security vulnerabilities, including a critical flaw that allows an attacker to run pipeline jobs as an arbitrary user. The issue, tracked as CVE-2024-6678, carries a CVSS score of 9.9 out of a maximum of 10.0 "An issue was discovered in GitLab CE/EE affecting all versions starting from 8.14 prior to 17.1.7, starting from 17.2 prior to 17.2.5, and starting from 17.3 prior to 17.3.2, which allows an attacker to trigger a pipeline as an arbitrary user under certain circumstances," the company said in an alert. The vulnerability, along with three high-severity, 11 medium-severity, and two low-severity bugs, have been addressed in versions 17.3.2, 17.2.5, 17.1.7 for GitLab Community Edition (CE) and Enterprise Edition (EE). It's worth noting that CVE-2024-6678 is the fourth such flaw that GitLab has patched over the past year after CVE-2023-5009 (CVSS score: 9.6), CVE-2024-5655 (CVSS score: 9.6), and CVE-2024

Internet-exposed Selenium Grid instances are being targeted by bad actors for illicit cryptocurrency mining and proxyjacking campaigns. "Selenium Grid is a server that facilitates running test cases in parallel across different browsers and versions," Cado Security researchers Tara Gould and Nate Bill said in an analysis published today. "However, Selenium Grid's default configuration lacks authentication, making it vulnerable to exploitation by threat actors." The abuse of publicly-accessible Selenium Grid instances for deploying crypto miners was previously highlighted by cloud security firm Wiz in late July 2024 as part of an activity cluster dubbed SeleniumGreed . Cado, which observed two different campaigns against its honeypot server, said the threat actors are exploiting the lack of authentication protections to carry out a diverse set of malicious actions. The first of them leverages the " goog:chromeOptions " dictionary to inject a Ba

Designed to be more than a one-time assessment— Wing Security's SaaS Pulse provides organizations with actionable insights and continuous oversight into their SaaS security posture—and it's free! Introducing SaaS Pulse: Free Continuous SaaS Risk Management  Just like waiting for a medical issue to become critical before seeing a doctor, organizations can't afford to overlook the constantly evolving risks in their SaaS ecosystems. New SaaS apps, shifting permissions, and emerging threats mean risks are always in motion. SaaS Pulse makes it easy to treat SaaS risk management as an ongoing practice, not just an occasional check-up. Security teams instantly get a real-time security "health" score, prioritized risks, contextualized threat insights, and the organization's app inventory—without setups or integrations. SaaS is a Moving Target SaaS stacks don't stand still. Business critical apps can easily slip into a state of vulnerability (i.e. supply chain attacks, account takeovers

Progress Software has released security updates for a maximum-severity flaw in LoadMaster and Multi-Tenant (MT) hypervisor that could result in the execution of arbitrary operating system commands. Tracked as CVE-2024-7591 (CVSS score: 10.0), the vulnerability has been described as an improper input validation bug that results in OS command injection. "It is possible for unauthenticated, remote attackers who have access to the management interface of LoadMaster to issue a carefully crafted http request that will allow arbitrary system commands to be executed," the company said in an advisory last week. "This vulnerability has been closed by sanitizing request user input to mitigate arbitrary system commands execution." The flaw affects the following versions - LoadMaster (7.2.60.0 and all prior versions) Multi-Tenant Hypervisor (7.1.35.11 and all prior versions) Security researcher Florian Grunow has been credited with discovering and reporting the flaw

Account takeover attacks have emerged as one of the most persistent and damaging threats to cloud-based SaaS environments. Yet despite significant investments in traditional security measures, many organizations continue to struggle with preventing these attacks. A new report, " Why Account Takeover Attacks Still Succeed, and Why the Browser is Your Secret Weapon in Stopping Them " argues that the browser is the primary battleground where account takeover attacks unfold and, thus, where they should be neutralized. The report also provides effective guidance for mitigating the account takeover risk.  Below are some of the key points raised in the report: The Role of the Browser in Account Takeovers According to the report, the SaaS kill chain takes advantage of the fundamental components that are contained within the browser. For account takeover, these include: Executed Web Pages - Attackers can create phishing login pages or use MiTM over legitimate web pages to harve

The most dangerous vulnerability you've never heard of. In the world of cybersecurity, vulnerabilities are discovered so often, and at such a high rate, that it can be very difficult to keep up with. Some vulnerabilities will start ringing alarm bells within your security tooling, while others are far more nuanced, but still pose an equally dangerous threat. Today, we want to discuss one of these more nuanced vulnerabilities as it is likely lurking in your environment waiting to be exploited: Active Directory Certificate Services vulnerabilities.  vPenTest by Vonahi Security recently implemented an attack vector specifically designed to identify and mitigate these hidden AD CS threats. But first, let's explore why AD CS vulnerabilities are so dangerous and how they work. What is Active Directory Certificate Services? Active Directory Certificate Services ("AD CS"), as defined by Microsoft is, "a Windows Server role for issuing and managing public key infrastructure (PKI) certific

Cybersecurity researchers are calling attention to a new QR code phishing (aka quishing) campaign that leverages Microsoft Sway infrastructure to host fake pages, once again highlighting the abuse of legitimate cloud offerings for malicious purposes. "By using legitimate cloud applications, attackers provide credibility to victims, helping them to trust the content it serves," Netskope Threat Labs researcher Jan Michael Alcantara said . "Additionally, a victim uses their Microsoft 365 account that they're already logged-into when they open a Sway page, that can help persuade them about its legitimacy as well. Sway can also be shared through either a link (URL link or visual link) or embedded on a website using an iframe." The attacks have primarily singled out users in Asia and North America, with technology, manufacturing, and finance sectors being the most sought-after sectors. Microsoft Sway is a cloud-based tool for creating newsletters, presentations

Details have emerged about a now-patched vulnerability in Microsoft 365 Copilot that could enable the theft of sensitive user information using a technique called ASCII smuggling. " ASCII Smuggling is a novel technique that uses special Unicode characters that mirror ASCII but are actually not visible in the user interface," security researcher Johann Rehberger said . "This means that an attacker can have the [large language model] render, to the user, invisible data, and embed them within clickable hyperlinks. This technique basically stages the data for exfiltration!" The entire attack strings together a number of attack methods to fashion them into a reliable exploit chain. This includes the following steps - Trigger prompt injection via malicious content concealed in a document shared on the chat to seize control of the chatbot Using a prompt injection payload to instruct Copilot to search for more emails and documents, a technique called automatic too

Cybersecurity researchers are warning about the security risks in the machine learning (ML) software supply chain following the discovery of more than 20 vulnerabilities that could be exploited to target MLOps platforms. These vulnerabilities, which are described as inherent- and implementation-based flaws, could have severe consequences, ranging from arbitrary code execution to loading malicious datasets. MLOps platforms offer the ability to design and execute an ML model pipeline, with a model registry acting as a repository used to store and version-trained ML models. These models can then be embedded within an application or allow other clients to query them using an API (aka model-as-a-service). "Inherent vulnerabilities are vulnerabilities that are caused by the underlying formats and processes used in the target technology," JFrog researchers said in a detailed report. Some examples of inherent vulnerabilities include abusing ML models to run code of the attacker