Security News

Microsoft urges admins of self-hosted Minecraft servers to upgrade to the latest release to defend against Khonsari ransomware attacks exploiting the critical Log4Shell security vulnerability. While there was no mention of attacks targeting Minecraft servers using Log4Shell exploits at the time, Redmond's security experts updated their CVE-2021-44228 guidance today to warn of ongoing exploitation to deliver ransomware on non-Microsoft hosted Minecraft servers.

Specifically, the error code 'MOZILLA PKIX ERROR OCSP RESPONSE FOR CERT MISSING' and the message "The OCSP response does not include a status for the certificate being verified," help trace down the cause of the issue. The Online Certificate Status Protocol is a way for browsers and other client-side applications to check if an SSL certificate has been revoked, as an alternative to relying on traditional revocation lists.

Malicious actors are deploying a previously undiscovered binary, an Internet Information Services webserver module dubbed "Owowa," on Microsoft Exchange Outlook Web Access servers with the goal of stealing credentials and enabling remote command execution. "Owowa is a C#-developed.NET v4.0 assembly that is intended to be loaded as a module within an IIS web server that also exposes Exchange's Outlook Web Access," Kaspersky researchers Paul Rascagneres and Pierre Delcher said.

Microsoft has rolled out Patch Tuesday updates to address multiple security vulnerabilities in Windows and other software, including one actively exploited flaw that's being abused to deliver Emotet, TrickBot, or Bazaloader malware payloads. It's worth noting that this is in addition to the 21 flaws resolved in the Chromium-based Microsoft Edge browser.

Microsoft is working on making Windows Terminal the default terminal emulator program in Windows 11 instead of the Windows Console Host, starting next year. Unlike the current default app, the Windows Terminal app comes with support for multiple console tabs in a single window and choosing between the cmd shell, PowerShell, and Linux distro shells installed via the Windows Subsystem for Linux.

Researchers have uncovered a previously unknown malicious IIS module, dubbed Owowa, that steals credentials when users log into Microsoft Outlook Web Access."The particular danger with Owowa is that an attacker can use the module to passively steal credentials from users who are legitimately accessing web services," he explained.

Microsoft has addressed a known issue that plagued Windows Server customers for weeks, preventing the Defender for Endpoint enterprise security platform from launching on some systems. The issue only impacts devices where customers installed Windows Server 2019 and Windows Server 2022 security updates issued during last month's Patch Tuesday.

Let's start with Microsoft, which put out a summary of its security updates here. Microsoft Defender for IoT: A critical remote-code execution flaw in this security product, prior to version 10.5.2, can be exploited over a network by a non-authenticated miscreant.

It's worth noting that Microsoft also patched CVE-2021-43883, a privilege-escalation vulnerability in Windows Installer, for which there's been an exploit circulating, and, reportedly, active targeting by attackers - even though Microsoft said it has seen no exploitation. "After gaining the initial foothold, achieving administrator-level access can allow attackers to disable security tools and deploy additional malware or tools like Mimikatz," he said.

Kaspersky has discovered a malicious add-on for Microsoft's Internet Information Service web server software that it said is designed to harvest credentials from Outlook Web Access, the webmail client for Exchange and Office 365. "While looking for potentially malicious implants that targeted Microsoft Exchange servers, we identified a suspicious binary that had been submitted to a multiscanner service in late 2020," Kaspersky said in its announcement of the discovery.