Security News
Cybersecurity researchers today disclosed details for a new vulnerability in VMware's Cloud Director platform that could potentially allow an attacker to gain access to sensitive information and control private clouds within an entire infrastructure. VMware Cloud Director is a popular deployment, automation, and management software that's used to operate and manage cloud resources, allowing businesses to data centers distributed across different geographical locations into virtual data centers.
Cybersecurity researchers today disclosed details for a new vulnerability in VMware's Cloud Director platform that could potentially allow an attacker to gain access to sensitive information and control private clouds within an entire infrastructure. VMware Cloud Director is a popular deployment, automation, and management software that's used to operate and manage cloud resources, allowing businesses to data centers distributed across different geographical locations into virtual data centers.
Six Cisco-operated servers were hacked via SaltStack security vulnerabilities, the networking giant revealed this week. The compromised systems act as the salt-master servers for releases 1.2 and 1.3 of Cisco's Virtual Internet Routing Lab Personal Edition product, and customer installations connect to these Cisco-maintained backend boxes.
The Russia-linked APT group Sandworm has been spotted exploiting a vulnerability in the internet's top email server software, according to the National Security Agency. Exim is the default MTA included on some Linux distros like Debian and Red Hat, and Exim-based mail servers in general run almost 57 percent of the internet's email servers, according to a survey last year.
The U.S. National Security Agency on Thursday published information on the targeting of Exim mail servers by the Russia-linked threat actor known as Sandworm Team. The open-source Exim mail transfer agent is used broadly worldwide, powering more than half of the Internet's email servers and also being pre-installed in some Linux distributions.
Earlier this month, when F-Secure publicly revealed the existence of two vulnerabilities affecting SaltStack Salt and attackers started actively exploiting them, Cisco was among the victims. The revelation was made on Thursday, when Cisco published an advisory saying that, on May 7, 2020, they've discovered the compromise of six of their salt-master servers, which are part of the Cisco VIRL-PE service infrastructure.
Now, Cisco reveals that salt-master servers that are used with Cisco Virtual Internet Routing Lab Personal Edition were upgraded on May 7, and that, on the same day, they were found to have been compromised through the aforementioned vulnerabilities. "Cisco identified that the Cisco maintained salt-master servers that are servicing Cisco VIRL-PE releases 1.2 and 1.3 were compromised. The servers were remediated on May 7, 2020," the company announced in an advisory.
Cisco said attackers have been able to compromise its servers after exploiting two known, critical SaltStack vulnerabilities. Hackers were able to successfully exploit the flaws incorporated in the latter product, resulting in the compromise of six VIRL-PE backend servers, according to Cisco.
A Java-based ransomware known as PonyFinal has galloped onto the scene, targeting enterprise systems management servers as an initial infection vector. As for the infection routine, "The PonyFinal ransomware is delivered through an MSI file that contains two batch files and the ransomware payload," researchers explained.
Threat actors have revamped a popular malware loader into a stealthy infostealer that targets Microsoft Exchange servers to pilfer enterprise mailing information, passwords and enterprise certificates, researchers have found. Valak was first observed as a loader in 2019 but has now gone through "a series of dramatic changes, an evolution of over 30 different versions in less than six months," Cybereason Nocturnus researchers Eli Salem, Lior Rochberger and Assaf Dahan said in a report posted online Thursday.