Security News
The NSA has blown the lid off 25 computer security vulnerabilities Chinese government hackers are using to break into networks, steal data, and so on. CVE-2019-0708: A remote code execution vulnerability exists within Microsoft Windows' Remote Desktop Services when an unauthenticated attacker connects to the target system using RDP and sends specially crafted requests.
Just days after issuing fixes for scores of bugs in its products for this month's Patch Tuesday, Microsoft has issued two more patches for security holes that can be exploited by maliciously crafted files to run malware on victims' computers. The first, CVE-2020-17023, is a Visual Studio issue that allows for remote code execution after getting the target to click on a specially crafted package.
Microsoft and Adobe released out-of-band security updates for Visual Studio Code, the Windows Codecs Library, and Magento. Microsoft has fixed CVE-2020-17023, a remote code execution vulnerability in Visual Studio Code, its free and extremely popular source-code editor that's available for Windows, macOS and Linux.
NCSC, the cybersecurity arm of the UK's GCHQ intelligence service, urges organizations to make sure that all Microsoft SharePoint products in their environments are patched against CVE-2020-16952 to block takeover attempts. The server-side include vulnerability was reported by information security specialist Steven Seeley of Qihoo 360 Vulcan Team who found that it affects Microsoft SharePoint Enterprise Server 2016, Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2013 Service Pack 1, and Microsoft SharePoint Server 2019.
A critical stack-based Buffer Overflow vulnerability has been discovered in SonicWall VPNs. When exploited, it allows unauthenticated remote attackers to execute arbitrary code on the impacted devices. Tracked as CVE-2020-5135, the vulnerability impacts multiple versions of SonicOS ran by hundreds of thousands of active VPNs. Craig Young of Tripwire Vulnerability and Exposure Research Team and Nikita Abramov of Positive Technologies have been credited with discovering and reporting the vulnerability.
The United States Cyber Command warns that users should apply the latest patches for Microsoft software to ensure they won't fall victim to exploitation attempts. The most important of these issues, US Cyber Command points out, is CVE-2020-16898, a critical bug in the Windows TCP/IP stack that can be triggered remotely to potentially achieve remote code execution on the victim machine.
US Cyber Command warns Microsoft customers to immediately patch their systems against the critical and remotely exploitable CVE-2020-16898 vulnerability addressed during this month's Patch Tuesday. "Update your Microsoft software now so your system isn't exploited: CVE-2020-16898 in particular should be patched or mitigated immediately, as vulnerable systems could be compromised remotely," US Cyber Command said in a tweet earlier today,.
Loosely speaking, if someone can ping your unpatched Windows 10 or Windows Server 2019 computer from theirs, they can probably crash you with this bug. In other words, Windows stack overflows in networking software almost always used to lead to so-called remote code execution exploits, where attackers could trigger the bug from afar with specially crafted network traffic, run code of their own choosing, and thereby inject malware without you even being aware.
Microsoft has pushed out fixes for 87 security vulnerabilities in October - 11 of them critical - and one of those is potentially wormable. "Coming in at 53 of the 87 vulnerabilities, patching the OS knocks out 60 percent of the vulnerabilities listed, along with over half of the critical RCE vulnerabilities resolved today."
It's Cybersecurity Awareness Month! In keeping with that theme, if youuse Microsoft Windows computers you should be aware the company shipped a bevy of software updates today to fix at least 87 security problems in Windows and programs that run on top of the operating system. Worst in terms of outright scariness is probably CVE-2020-16898, which is a nasty bug in Windows 10 and Windows Server 2019 that could be abused to install malware just by sending a malformed packet of data at a vulnerable system.