WannaCry ransomware’s outbreak during the weekend was mitigated by having its kill switch domain registered. It was only a matter of time, however, for other cybercriminals to follow suit. Case in point: the emergence of UIWIX ransomware (detected by Trend Micro as RANSOM_UIWIX.A) and one notable Trojan our sensors detected.
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Microsoft’s Patch Tuesday for October fixed another previous zero-day vulnerability in Internet Explorer (IE) via MS16-118 and MS16-126: CVE-2016-3298. Before the lid was put on it, the security flaw was employed alongside CVE-2016-3351 by operators of the AdGholas malvertising campaign, analysis and disclosure of which were made with our collaboration with Proofpoint’s @kafeine last July 2016. The campaign was notable for the economies of scale and scope it achieved in its heyday until its operations were stymied. As shared by @kafeine, it was even integrated in Neutrino exploit kit’s malvertising chain as a malicious JavaScript.
Exploiting CVE-2016-3298 enables attackers to check for specific antivirus (AV) software installed in the system in order to avoid AV detection and threat research/analysis. This sounds innocuous, but determining if the system is unsecure eases—and even automates—the undertaking of sneaking malware into it.
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News about Badlock vulnerability affecting Windows computers and Samba servers started showing up on Twitter and media around three weeks ago. The site badlock[.]org was registered on March 11 according to WHOIS. There has been a lot of guessing and speculation around this vulnerability. It’s time for reality check: just how bad actually is Badlock?
Named vulnerabilities have resulted in being clichéd very quickly. Being a named vulnerability doesn’t qualify it as a serious widespread vulnerability. Badlock is somewhere in between. In this entry, we demystify the hype of Badlock with questions that measure it as a vulnerability. We also pin it up against a noteworthy case to see how it compares.
Read MoreFollowing its release of a security update for Acrobat and Reader, Adobe has released another one, this time to address 23 reported vulnerabilities in Flash. In its advisory (APSB16-08), Adobe notes that this patch addresses critical vulnerabilities that could allow an attack to gain control of an affected system. They further note that one of the vulnerabilities (CVE-2016-1010) “is being used in limited, targeted attacks.”
Read MoreThreats never stand still, and exploits kits were no exception. 2015 saw multiple changes to this part of the threat landscape: freshly-discovered exploits were added, and compromised websites and malvertising were used to deploy and spread threats using exploit kits. Exploit kits were a key part of the threat landscape in 2015. In this series of posts,…
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