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A critical security flaw has been disclosed in the Apache Avro Java Software Development Kit (SDK) that, if successfully exploited, could allow the execution of arbitrary code on susceptible instances. The flaw, tracked as CVE-2024-47561 , impacts all versions of the software prior to 1.11.4. "Schema parsing in the Java SDK of Apache Avro 1.11.3 and previous versions allows bad actors to execute arbitrary code," the project maintainers said in an advisory released last week. "Users are recommended to upgrade to version 1.11.4 or 1.12.0, which fix this issue." Apache Avro, analogous to Google's Protocol Buffers ( protobuf ), is an open-source project that provides a language-neutral data serialization framework for large-scale data processing. The Avro team notes that the vulnerability affects any application if it allows users to provide their own Avro schemas for parsing. Kostya Kortchinsky from the Databricks security team has been credited with discov

Google has revealed that its transition to memory-safe languages such as Rust as part of its secure-by-design approach has led to the percentage of memory-safe vulnerabilities discovered in Android dropping from 76% to 24% over a period of six years. The tech giant said focusing on Safe Coding for new features not only reduces the overall security risk of a codebase, but also makes the switch more "scalable and cost-effective." Eventually, this leads to a drop in memory safety vulnerabilities as new memory unsafe development slows down after a certain period of time, and new memory safe development takes over, Google's Jeff Vander Stoep and Alex Rebert said in a post shared with The Hacker News. Perhaps even more interestingly, the number of memory safety vulnerabilities tends to register a drop notwithstanding an increase in the quantity of new memory unsafe code. The paradox is explained by the fact that vulnerabilities decay exponentially, with a study finding

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,

SolarWinds has released fixes to address two security flaws in its Access Rights Manager (ARM) software, including a critical vulnerability that could result in remote code execution. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-28991 , is rated 9.0 out of a maximum of 10.0 on the CVSS scoring system. It has been described as an instance of deserialization of untrusted data. "SolarWinds Access Rights Manager (ARM) was found to be susceptible to a remote code execution vulnerability," the company said in an advisory. "If exploited, this vulnerability would allow an authenticated user to abuse the service, resulting in remote code execution." Security researcher Piotr Bazydlo of the Trend Micro Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) has been credited with discovering and reporting the flaw on May 24, 2024. The ZDI, which has assigned the shortcoming a CVSS score of 9.9, said it exists within a class called JsonSerializationBinder and stems from a lack of proper validation of user

Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered a new set of malicious Python packages that target software developers under the guise of coding assessments. "The new samples were tracked to GitHub projects that have been linked to previous, targeted attacks in which developers are lured using fake job interviews," ReversingLabs researcher Karlo Zanki said . The activity has been assessed to be part of an ongoing campaign dubbed VMConnect that first came to light in August 2023. There are indications that it is the handiwork of the North Korea-backed Lazarus Group . The use of job interviews as an infection vector has been adopted widely by North Korean threat actors, either approaching unsuspecting developers on sites such as LinkedIn or tricking them into downloading rogue packages as part of a purported skills test. These packages, for their part, have been published directly on public repositories like npm and PyPI, or hosted on GitHub repositories under their control.

Threat actors have long leveraged typosquatting as a means to trick unsuspecting users into visiting malicious websites or downloading booby-trapped software and packages. These attacks typically involve registering domains or packages with names slightly altered from their legitimate counterparts (e.g., goog1e.com vs. google.com). Adversaries targeting open-source repositories across platforms have relied on developers making typing errors to initiate software supply chain attacks through PyPI, npm, Maven Central, NuGet, RubyGems, and Crate. The latest findings from cloud security firm Orca show that even GitHub Actions , a continuous integration and continuous delivery ( CI/CD ) platform, is not immune from the threat. "If developers make a typo in their GitHub action that matches a typosquatter's action, applications could be made to run malicious code without the developer even realizing," security researcher Ofir Yakobi said in a report shared with The Ha

Roblox developers are the target of a persistent campaign that seeks to compromise systems through bogus npm packages, once again underscoring how threat actors continue to exploit the trust in the open-source ecosystem to deliver malware. "By mimicking the popular 'noblox.js' library, attackers have published dozens of packages designed to steal sensitive data and compromise systems," Checkmarx researcher Yehuda Gelb said in a technical report. Roblox is an online game platform and game creation system with nearly 80 million daily active users , and thus makes for an attractive target for threat actors. It was launched in September 2006 for Windows, before debuting in other platforms, including iOS, Android, Xbox One, Meta Quest, and PlayStation 4. Details about the activity were first documented by ReversingLabs in August 2023 as part of a campaign that delivered a stealer called Luna Token Grabber, which it said was a "replay of an attack uncovered two

A newly discovered attack vector in GitHub Actions artifacts dubbed ArtiPACKED could be exploited to take over repositories and gain access to organizations' cloud environments. "A combination of misconfigurations and security flaws can make artifacts leak tokens, both of third party cloud services and GitHub tokens, making them available for anyone with read access to the repository to consume," Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 researcher Yaron Avital said in a report published this week. "This allows malicious actors with access to these artifacts the potential of compromising the services to which these secrets grant access." The cybersecurity company said it primarily observed the leakage of GitHub tokens (e.g., GITHUB_TOKEN and ACTIONS_RUNTIME_TOKEN), which could not only give malicious actors unauthorized access to the repositories, but also grant them the ability to poison the source code and get it pushed to production via CI/CD workflows. Artifacts in

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new malicious package on the Python Package Index (PyPI) repository that masquerades as a library from the Solana blockchain platform but is actually designed to steal victims' secrets. "The legitimate Solana Python API project is known as 'solana-py' on GitHub, but simply ' solana ' on the Python software registry, PyPI," Sonatype researcher Ax Sharma said in a report published last week. "This slight naming discrepancy has been leveraged by a threat actor who published a 'solana-py' project on PyPI." The malicious "solana-py" package attracted a total of 1,122 downloads since it was published on August 4, 2024. It's no longer available for download from PyPI. The most striking aspect of the library is that it carried the version numbers 0.34.3, 0.34.4, and 0.34.5. The latest version of the legitimate "solana" package is 0.34.3. This clearly indicates an attempt o

In yet another sign that threat actors are always looking out for new ways to trick users into downloading malware, it has come to light that the question-and-answer (Q&A) platform known as Stack Exchange has been abused to direct unsuspecting developers to bogus Python packages capable of draining their cryptocurrency wallets. "Upon installation, this code would execute automatically, setting in motion a chain of events designed to compromise and control the victim's systems, while also exfiltrating their data and draining their crypto wallets," Checkmarx researchers Yehuda Gelb and Tzachi Zornstain said in a report shared with The Hacker News. The campaign, which began on June 25, 2024, specifically singled out cryptocurrency users involved with Raydium and Solana. The list of rogue packages uncovered as part of the activity is listed below - raydium (762 downloads) raydium-sdk (137 downloads) sol-instruct (115 downloads) sol-structs (292 downloads) sp

The threat actors behind an ongoing malware campaign targeting software developers have demonstrated new malware and tactics, expanding their focus to include Windows, Linux, and macOS systems. The activity cluster, dubbed DEV#POPPER and linked to North Korea, has been found to have singled out victims across South Korea, North America, Europe, and the Middle East. "This form of attack is an advanced form of social engineering, designed to manipulate individuals into divulging confidential information or performing actions that they might normally not," Securonix researchers Den Iuzvyk and Tim Peck said in a new report shared with The Hacker News. DEV#POPPER is the moniker assigned to an active malware campaign that tricks software developers into downloading booby-trapped software hosted on GitHub under the guise of a job interview. It shares overlaps with a campaign tracked by Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 under the name Contagious Interview . Signs that the campaign

Let's face it: AppSec and developers often feel like they're on opposing teams. You're battling endless vulnerabilities while they just want to ship code. Sound familiar? It's a common challenge, but there is a solution. Ever wish they proactively cared about security? The answer lies in a proven, but often overlooked, strategy: Security Champion Programs — a way to turn developers from adversaries into security advocates? Join our upcoming FREE webinar, " Turn Developers into Allies: The Power of Security Champion Programs, " to discover the secrets behind this game-changing approach. In this webinar, you'll learn: Overcoming the Resistance: Proven tactics to bridge the gap between developers and security, fostering a spirit of collaboration and trust. The Power of Effective Communication: Learn how to make security messaging resonate with developers, without the jargon overload. Creating a Culture of Champions: Discover how to build a Securi

Cybersecurity researchers have identified two malicious packages on the npm package registry that concealed backdoor code to execute malicious commands sent from a remote server. The packages in question – img-aws-s3-object-multipart-copy and legacyaws-s3-object-multipart-copy – have been downloaded 190 and 48 times each. As of writing, they have been taken down by the npm security team. "They contained sophisticated command and control functionality hidden in image files that would be executed during package installation," software supply chain security firm Phylum said in an analysis. The packages are designed to impersonate a legitimate npm library called aws-s3-object-multipart-copy , but come with an altered version of the "index.js" file to execute a JavaScript file ("loadformat.js"). For its part, the JavaScript file is designed to process three images -- that feature the corporate logos for Intel, Microsoft, and AMD -- with the image corres

Installers for three different software products developed by an Indian company named Conceptworld have been trojanized to distribute information-stealing malware. The installers correspond to Notezilla, RecentX, and Copywhiz, according to cybersecurity firm Rapid7, which discovered the supply chain compromise on June 18, 2024. The issue has since been remediated by Conceptworld as of June 24 within 12 hours of responsible disclosure. "The installers had been trojanized to execute information-stealing malware that has the capability to download and execute additional payloads," the company said , adding the malicious versions had a larger file size than their legitimate counterparts. Specifically, the malware is equipped to steal browser credentials and cryptocurrency wallet information, log clipboard contents and keystrokes, and download and execute additional payloads on infected Windows hosts. It also sets up persistence using a scheduled task to execute the main paylo

The heightened regulatory and legal pressure on software-producing organizations to secure their supply chains and ensure the integrity of their software should come as no surprise. In the last several years, the software supply chain has become an increasingly attractive target for attackers who see opportunities to force-multiply their attacks by orders of magnitude. For example, look no further than 2021's Log4j breach, where Log4j (an open-source logging framework maintained by Apache and used in a myriad of different applications) was the root of exploits that put thousands of systems at risk.  Log4j's communication functionality was vulnerable and thus provided an opening for an attacker to inject malicious code into the logs which could then be executed on the system. After its discovery, security researchers saw millions of attempted exploits, many of which turned into successful denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. According to some of the latest research by Gartner, close t

Google has developed a new framework called Project Naptime that it says enables a large language model (LLM) to carry out vulnerability research with an aim to improve automated discovery approaches. "The Naptime architecture is centered around the interaction between an AI agent and a target codebase," Google Project Zero researchers Sergei Glazunov and Mark Brand said . "The agent is provided with a set of specialized tools designed to mimic the workflow of a human security researcher." The initiative is so named for the fact that it allows humans to "take regular naps" while it assists with vulnerability research and automating variant analysis. The approach, at its core, seeks to take advantage of advances in code comprehension and general reasoning ability of LLMs, thus allowing them to replicate human behavior when it comes to identifying and demonstrating security vulnerabilities. It encompasses several components such as a Code Browser tool

Cybersecurity researchers have detailed a now-patched security flaw affecting the Ollama open-source artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure platform that could be exploited to achieve remote code execution. Tracked as CVE-2024-37032 , the vulnerability has been codenamed Probllama by cloud security firm Wiz. Following responsible disclosure on May 5, 2024, the issue was addressed in version 0.1.34 released on May 7, 2024. Ollama is a service for packaging, deploying, running large language models (LLMs) locally on Windows, Linux, and macOS devices. At its core, the issue relates to a case of insufficient input validation that results in a path traversal flaw an attacker could exploit to overwrite arbitrary files on the server and ultimately lead to remote code execution. The shortcoming requires the threat actor to send specially crafted HTTP requests to the Ollama API server for successful exploitation. It specifically takes advantage of the API endpoint "/api/pull&

Traditional application security practices are not effective in the modern DevOps world. When security scans are run only at the end of the software delivery lifecycle (either right before or after a service is deployed), the ensuing process of compiling and fixing vulnerabilities creates massive overhead for developers. The overhead that degrades velocity and puts production deadlines at risk. Regulatory pressure to ensure the integrity of all software components is also ramping up dramatically. Applications are built with an increasing number of open source software (OSS) components and other 3rd party artifacts, each of which can introduce new vulnerabilities to the application. Attackers seek to exploit these components' vulnerabilities, which also puts the software's consumers at risk. Software represents the largest under-addressed attack surface that organizations face. Some interesting statistics to digest: More than 80% of software vulnerabilities are introduced through o

Microsoft on Wednesday outlined its plans to deprecate Visual Basic Script (VBScript) in the second half of 2024 in favor of more advanced alternatives such as JavaScript and PowerShell. "Technology has advanced over the years, giving rise to more powerful and versatile scripting languages such as JavaScript and PowerShell," Microsoft Program Manager Naveen Shankar  said . "These languages offer broader capabilities and are better suited for modern web development and automation tasks." The tech giant originally  announced  its plans to gradually sunset VBScript in October 2023. The scripting language, also called Visual Basic Scripting Edition, was first introduced by Microsoft in 1996 as a Windows system component, offering users the ability to automate tasks and develop interactive web pages using Internet Explorer and Edge (in  Internet Explorer mode ). The announced deprecation plan consists of three phases, with the first phase kicking off in the second h