Security News

Apple has released security updates to address a zero-day vulnerability exploited in the wild and impacting iPhones, iPads, and Macs. Three iOS zero-days in February, exploited in the wild and reported by anonymous researchers.

iPhone users, drop what you're doing and update now: Apple has issued a warning about a ream of code-execution vulnerabilities - some of which are remotely exploitable - and experts are emphatically recommending an ASAP update to version 14.7 of iOS and iPadOS. Unfortunately, you aren't getting a fix for the flaw that makes your iPhones easy prey for Pegasus spyware. A local attacker may be able to execute code on the Apple T2 Security Chip due to multiple logic issues in IOKit.

Microsoft has shared a workaround for a Windows 10 zero-day vulnerability that can let attackers gain admin rights on vulnerable systems and execute arbitrary code with SYSTEM privileges. "An elevation of privilege vulnerability exists because of overly permissive Access Control Lists on multiple system files, including the Security Accounts Manager database," Microsoft explains in a security advisory published on Tuesday evening.

Microsoft has shared a workaround for a Windows 10 zero-day vulnerability that can let attackers gain admin rights on vulnerable systems and execute arbitrary code with SYSTEM privileges. "An elevation of privilege vulnerability exists because of overly permissive Access Control Lists on multiple system files, including the Security Accounts Manager database," Microsoft explains in a security advisory published on Tuesday evening.

The Cyberspace Administration of China has issued new stricter vulnerability disclosure regulations that mandate software and networking vendors affected with critical flaws to mandatorily disclose them first-hand to the government authorities within two days of filing a report. The "Regulations on the Management of Network Product Security Vulnerability" are expected to go into effect starting September 1, 2021, and aim to standardize the discovery, reporting, repair, and release of security vulnerabilities and prevent security risks.

Another zero day vulnerability in Windows Print Spooler can give a threat actor administrative privileges on a Windows machine through a remote server under the attacker's control and the 'Queue-Specific Files' feature. Since the incomplete fix, security researchers have been heavily scrutinizing the Windows printing APIs and have found further vulnerabilities affecting the Windows print spooler.

Microsoft rolled out Patch Tuesday updates for the month of July with fixes for a total of 117 security vulnerabilities, including nine zero-day flaws, of which four are said to be under active attacks in the wild, potentially enabling an adversary to take control of affected systems. "This Patch Tuesday comes just days after out-of-band updates were released to address PrintNightmare - the critical flaw in the Windows Print Spooler service that was found in all versions of Windows," Bharat Jogi, senior manager of vulnerability and threat research at Qualys, told The Hacker News.

For the seventh time this year, Google is dealing with zero-day attacks targeting users of its flagship Chrome web browser. The search advertising giant released a Chrome security refresh overnight with a warning that malicious hackers are actively exploiting a critical type confusion vulnerability to launch malware attacks.

Google has released Chrome 91.0.4472.164 for Windows, Mac, and Linux to fix seven security vulnerabilities, one of them a high severity zero-day vulnerability exploited in the wild. Google Chrome will automatically update itself on the next launch, but you can also manually update it by checking for the newly released version from Settings > Help > 'About Google Chrome.

Software patches from Microsoft this week closed two vulnerabilities exploited by spyware said to have been sold to governments by Israeli developer Candiru. On Thursday, Citizen Lab released a report fingering Candiru as the maker of the espionage toolkit, an outfit Microsoft code-named Sourgum.