Security News

VMware to Patch Recent Salt Vulnerabilities in vROps
2020-05-11 14:25

VMware is working on patches for its vRealize Operations Manager product to fix two recently disclosed Salt vulnerabilities that have already been exploited to hack organizations. Researchers discovered recently that the configuration management and orchestration system Salt is affected by serious vulnerabilities that can be exploited for authentication bypass and directory traversal.

Week in review: Password psychology, SaltStack Salt vulnerabilities exploited, Patch Tuesday forecast
2020-05-10 07:10

SaltStack Salt vulnerabilities actively exploited by attackers, patch ASAP!Two vulnerabilities in SaltStack Salt, an open-source remote task and configuration management framework, are being actively exploited by attackers, CISA warns. The US Department of Homeland Security and the UK National Cyber Security Centre issued a joint advisory in early April, warning about this increasing activity.

Elementor Plugin Vulnerabilities Exploited to Hack WordPress Sites
2020-05-08 11:49

Threat actors are actively targeting a vulnerability in the Elementor Pro plugin for WordPress to compromise websites, WordPress security company Defiant warned this week. With an estimated install base of over 1 million websites, Elementor Pro is the paid version of the free Elementor plugin, a drag and drop page builder.

GitHub Code Scanning aims to prevent vulnerabilities in open source software
2020-05-08 07:48

GitHub has made available two new security features for open and private repositories: code scanning and secret scanning. The code scanning feature, available for set up in every GitHub repository, is powered by CodeQL, a semantic code analysis engine that GitHub has made available last year.

Cisco Patches High Severity Vulnerabilities in Security Products
2020-05-07 18:56

Cisco this week released security updates to address more than 30 vulnerabilities in various products, including 12 high severity flaws impacting Adaptive Security Appliance and Firepower Threat Defense. The most important of these issues is tracked as CVE-2020-3187 and could be exploited to conduct directory traversal attacks and then read or delete sensitive files on a vulnerable system.

Web and network perimeter vulnerabilities slightly lower than 2019
2020-05-07 17:01

Even with a 30% decline, web applications are still at risk and new scan targets have more vulnerabilities than others, according to a new Acunetix report. While applications protected by web vulnerability scanning are becoming more secure, "relatively new targets have more vulnerabilities, according to the 2020 Acunetix Web Vulnerability Report.

Search Company Algolia Hacked via Recent Salt Vulnerabilities
2020-05-07 15:39

A couple of Salt vulnerabilities addressed last week were abused over the weekend to hack Algolia's infrastructure, the search-as-a-service startup revealed. An open-source configuration tool designed for monitoring and updating the state of servers deployed in datacenters and in the cloud, Salt was recently found to be impacted by two issues that could allow attackers to execute arbitrary commands.

Nearly 1 Million WordPress Sites Targeted via Old Vulnerabilities
2020-05-07 04:07

A large-scale attack campaign has targeted over 900,000 WordPress websites through vulnerabilities in plugins and themes, WordPress security company Defiant revealed this week. Responsible for only a small volume of attacks in the past, the threat actor has ramped up the operation, with over 20 million attacks registered on May 3.

Software vulnerabilities sometimes first announced on social media
2020-05-07 04:00

Software vulnerabilities are more likely to be discussed on social media before they're revealed on a government reporting site, a practice that could pose a national security threat, according to computer scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. At the same time, those vulnerabilities present a cybersecurity opportunity for governments to more closely monitor social media discussions about software gaps, the researchers assert.

New GitHub Features Help Find Vulnerabilities and Secrets in Code
2020-05-06 16:46

GitHub on Wednesday announced two new security features designed to help developers identify vulnerabilities and potential secrets in their code. These new security features, code scanning and secret scanning, are currently in beta.