Security News
The Cloud Security Alliance has released new Crypto-Asset Exchange Security Guidelines, a set of guidelines and best practices for crypto-asset exchange security. Drafted by CSA's Blockchain/Distributed Ledger Working Group, the document provides readers with a comprehensive set of guidelines for effective exchange security to help educate users, policymakers, and cybersecurity professionals on the pros and cons of further securing cryptocurrency exchanges, including both Decentralized Exchanges and hosted wallets at cloud-based exchanges, OTC desks, and cryptocurrency swap services.
April showers bring hours of patches as Microsoft delivers its Patch Tuesday fun-fest consisting of over a hundred CVEs, including four Exchange Server vulnerabilities reported to the company by the US National Security Agency. "This month's release includes a number of critical vulnerabilities that we recommend you prioritize, including updates to protect against new vulnerabilities in on-premise Exchange Servers," Microsoft said in its blog post.
Microsoft today has released security updates for Exchange Server that address a set of four vulnerabilities with severity scores ranging from high to critical. The flaws affect on-premise Exchange Server versions 2013 through 2019 and while there is no evidence of being exploited in the wild, Microsoft assesses that threat actors are likely to leverage them as soon as they create an exploit.
Just weeks after a wave of major in-the-wild zero-day attacks against Exchange Server installations globally, Microsoft is raising a fresh alarm for four new critical security flaws that expose businesses to remote code execution attacks. The four new Exchange Server vulnerabilities were fixed as part of this month's Patch Tuesday bundle and because of the severity of these issues, Microsoft has joined with the U.S. National Security Agency to urge the immediate deployment of the new fixes.
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency this week published details on additional malware identified on compromised Microsoft Exchange servers, namely China Chopper webshells and DearCry ransomware. The malware operators target Exchange servers through a series of vulnerabilities that were made public on March 3, the same day Microsoft released patches for them.
The 2021 spring edition of Pwn2Own hacking contest concluded last week on April 8 with a three-way tie between Team Devcore, OV, and Computest researchers Daan Keuper and Thijs Alkemade. A zero-click exploit targeting Zoom that employed a three-bug chain to exploit the messenger app and gain code execution on the target system.
The annual Pwn2Own contest features live hacking where top cybersecurity researchers duke it out under time pressure for huge cash prizes. Pwn2Own is a bug bounty program with a twist.
During the first day of Pwn2Own 2021, contestants won $440,000 after successfully exploiting previously unknown vulnerabilities to hack Microsoft's Windows 10 OS, the Exchange mail server, and the Teams communication platform. The first to fall was Microsoft Exchange in the Server category after the Devcore team achieved remote code execution on an Exchange server by chaining together an authentication bypass and a local privilege escalation.
With Azure AD verifiable credentials now available in public preview, Microsoft is collaborating with leading identity verification providers to improve verifiability and secure information exchange. Once verified, these credentials can be used to prove an identity across different organizations to accelerate onboarding of users, secure access to apps or enable a more trustworthy credential recovery experience.
The Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has issued a supplemental directive requiring all federal agencies to identify vulnerable Microsoft Exchange servers. Providing additional direction on the implementation of CISA Emergency Directive 21-02, which on March 3 requested federal agencies to take the necessary steps to disconnect and update Exchange servers, the new directive demands agencies to accelerate the mitigation process.