Greetings, As data breaches and cyber attacks are progressively becoming more prevalent, organisations and individuals are now under threat more than ever. As a result it is increasingly important to properly equip yourself with the correct tools and training to ensure you and your organisation are prepared for the growing possibility of an attack. The recent threat on 3CX is a cause for concern for most people – and for good reason! The Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) software development company’s system caters to more than 12 million daily users and 600,000 companies worldwide, including some very high-profile organisations. Hackers reportedly compromised the app to target the company’s customers which could have exposed sensitive personal and financial data for all users and organisations involved. As these data threats and breaches are increasingly becoming more common, organisations and individuals must do all they can to avoid the negative repercussions that can result. It's important for individuals and organizations to take steps to protect themselves against cyber attacks, such as using strong authentication, keeping software up to date, avoiding suspicious links and emails, and backing up important data. Additionally, organisations should invest in their people, to empower them to be an active part of cyber security risk reduction. Resources like IDCare’s fact sheets are great information sources to educate yourself and colleagues on the appropriate measures to take against common threats. Scam watch can keep you updated with the latest threats and statistics. Also, something practical most people can do to help protect themselves and their loved ones is to employ Multi Factor Authentication (MFA), here’s some helpful information on how to enable it for a variety of services – https://2fa.directory/au/ Before we finish up for the week I would like to do a final reminder that Early Bird Offers and Member tokens are expiring today, March 31, for our 2023 AUSCERT conference. There’s never been a better time to further you and your organisation’s knowledge and expertise in cyber security, make sure to register today! Google finds more Android, iOS zero-days used to install spyware Date: 2023-03-29 Author: Bleeping Computer Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG) discovered several exploit chains using Android, iOS, and Chrome zero-day and n-day vulnerabilities to install commercial spyware and malicious apps on targets' devices. The attackers targeted iOS and Android users with separate exploit chains as part of a first campaign spotted in November 2022. They used text messages pushing bit.ly shortened links to redirect the victims to legitimate shipment websites from Italy, Malaysia, and Kazakhstan after first sending them to pages triggering exploits abusing an iOS WebKit remote code execution zero-day (CVE-2022-42856) and a sandbox escape (CVE-2021-30900) bug. Crown Resorts confirms ransom demand after GoAnywhere breach Date: 2023-03-28 Author: Bleeping Computer Crown Resorts, Australia's largest gambling and entertainment company, has confirmed that it suffered a data breach after its GoAnywhere secure file-sharing server was breached using a zero-day vulnerability. The Blackstone-owned company has an annual revenue that surpasses $8 billion and operates complexes in Melbourne, Perth, Sydney, Macau, and London. This data breach was conducted by the Clop ransomware gang, which has shifted over the past year from encrypting files to performing data extortion attacks. In February, the threat actors claimed to have stolen data from 130 organizations over ten days utilizing a GoAnywhere zero-day vulnerability. This is the most detailed portrait yet of data breaches in Australia Date: 2023-03-28 Author: ABC News Every bubble in the chart [below] is a data breach that put Australians at likely risk of “serious harm”. It shows a total of 2,784 recorded breaches since the start of 2020 — covering everything from the Optus and Medibank breaches, which exposed the personal information of millions, to mistakenly sent emails only affecting a single unlucky person. The chart is based on the official record of data breaches reported to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC), obtained and published for the first time by the ABC. Hotel and property giant Meriton hit by data hack, personal documents may be at risk Date: 2023-03-29 Author: ABC News One of Australia's biggest property giants has been hit by cybercriminals who may have made off with highly sensitive personal data including birth certificates and bank details, as well as information about salaries and disciplinary proceedings. Guests and staff members employed by Meriton were affected by the data breach when hackers struck the luxury developer on January 14 this year. NGS Super says 'limited data' stolen in cyber attack – Security Date: 2023-03-28 Author: iTnews NGS Super, an industry superannuation fund serving the education and community sectors, said an attacker had stolen “limited data” from its systems. The fund said it detected and shut down an incident on March 17, but not before the attacker was able to exfiltrate some data. The stolen data was stored on “internal drives”, according to the fund; why it was stored there is a matter for investigation. “For our members we know that data was accessed, which for a group of members included their primary identifiers,” NGS Super said. Home Affairs to set up cyber and infrastructure security group Date: 2023-03-27 Author: iTnews Home Affairs will set up a new cyber and infrastructure security group from May that will lead industry partnerships and support the implementation of the next nation cyber security strategy. Secretary Michael Pezzullo told a Home Affairs cyber and infrastructure security conference that the new group would be led by Hamish Hansford in a new deputy secretary position. ESB-2023.1834 – macOS Ventura: CVSS (Max): 7.8* Apple has released the macOS Ventura 13.3 update which includes more than 30 security updates. ESB-2023.1847 – Tenable.sc: CVSS (Max): 9.8 Tenable has released updates for multiple vulnerabilities in third party software leveraged by Tenable.sc ESB-2023.1860 – OpenShift Container Platform 4.10.55: CVSS (Max): 7.8 Red Hat Openshift Container Platform is now updated to address multiple vulnerabilities. ESB-2023.1861 – Mozilla Thunderbird: CVSS (Max): None Mozilla has fixed denial of service attack in Thunderbird 102.9.1 for users who use the Matrix chat protocol. Stay safe, stay patched and have a good weekend! The AUSCERT team

Greetings, Some of the articles about AI language models wanting to escape and become human might be slightly alarming, but a real alarmist point of view may be whether AI will replace existing roles undertaken by humans. Already we’ve seen use cases emerge in the cyber security industry like using ChatGPT to create a dark web monitoring tool, however the previous article does point out that it’s important to realise the limitations of AI – such as its reliance on training data. Meanwhile entire new industries have sprung up in recent times, such as the field of data governance, and let’s not forget that cyber security itself is still a relatively young industry. Each of these industries and their sub-specialty areas require new training and fresh ideas. Perhaps it’s safer to “future-proof against AI” and upskill? At an event themed “Back to the Future”, it’s very likely AI will be discussed at length and there’s a plethora of included training during the first two days in the form of half and full day tutorials of the AUSCERT2023 Cyber Security Conference. However at least as far as we’re aware, unlike McFly you can’t travel back or forward in time, and there’s only one week left for early bird registrations. Member Tokens also expire then, so if you haven’t seen yours yet, ask your member representative. Another great way to learn and upskill is to follow cyber security podcasts like AUSCERT’s “Share Today, Save Tomorrow” – there’s a new one available now with some reflections on AUSCERT’s 30th birthday celebrations earlier this month. And now a selection of this week’s notable cyber security news articles, compiled by the AUSCERT Analyst Team: Ferrari Says Ransomware Attack Exposed Customer Data Date: 2023-03-20 Author: Security Week Italian sports car maker Ferrari said on Monday that a threat actor had demanded a ransom related to customer contact details that may have been exposed in a ransomware attack. “Upon receipt of the ransom demand, we immediately started an investigation in collaboration with a leading global third-party cybersecurity firm,” the iconic car maker said. “In addition, we informed the relevant authorities and are confident they will investigate to the full extent of the law.” Most consumers want data privacy and will act to defend it Date: 2023-03-22 Author: IAPP With new technologies, new types of data and new methods of collection defining of our current reality, privacy cannot merely be an afterthought. Language models are fueled by our personal data, artificial intelligence art generators sexualize without consent and the metaverse embodies “data collection on steroids.” In addition to these technological changes creating rifts in privacy, cracks have also appeared in the legal foundations protecting long-established privacy rights. New privacy risks, it seems, are everywhere. How to turn off Wi-Fi calling on Android to combat hackers Date: 2023-03-20 Author: Scripps News Google’s Project Zero team discovered multiple security flaws with Samsung Galaxy smartphones that could allow hackers to target devices easily. All a hacker would need is the victim’s phone number, which can be used to compromise the phone without the user knowing anything is wrong. “Tests conducted by Project Zero confirm that those four vulnerabilities allow an attacker to remotely compromise a phone at the baseband level with no user interaction and require only that the attacker know the victim’s phone number. With limited additional research and development, Hackers mostly targeted Microsoft, Google, Apple zero-days in 2022 Date: 2023-03-20 Author: Bleeping Computer Hackers continue to target zero-day vulnerabilities in malicious campaigns, with researchers reporting that 55 zero-days were actively exploited in 2022, most targeting Microsoft, Google, and Apple products. Most of these vulnerabilities (53 out of 55) enabled the attacker to either gain elevated privileges or perform remote code execution on vulnerable devices. Zero-day vulnerabilities are security weaknesses in software products that are publicly disclosed or exploited before a developer knows about it or releases a fix. Organizations Notified of Remotely Exploitable Vulnerabilities in Aveva HMI, SCADA Products Date: 2023-03-21 Author: Security Week Organizations that use human-machine interface (HMI) and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) products from UK-based industrial software maker Aveva have been informed about the existence of several potentially serious vulnerabilities. Security advisories published last week by Aveva and the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) inform users about three vulnerabilities in the InTouch Access Anywhere HMI and Plant SCADA Access Anywhere products. Software updates that patch all vulnerabilities are available from the vendor. Rio Tinto says staff’s personal data may have been hacked in memo after an attack on GoAnywhere software Date: 2023-03-23 Author: ABC News Personal data of Rio Tinto Ltd’s former and current employees may have been stolen by a cybercriminal group, according to a staff memo. Payroll information — such as pay slips and overpayment letters — belonging to a small number of employees from January 2023 had possibly been seized by the group, the memo showed. “Investigations now indicate a possibility that Rio Tinto data may be impacted,” it said. ESB-2023.1632 – thunderbird: CVSS (Max): 7.5 Debian reports that multiple security issues have been discovered in Thunderbird, which, if exploited could result in denial of service, the execution of arbitrary code or spoofing. ESB-2023.1693 – Rockwell Automation ThinManager: CVSS (Max): 9.8 An advisory issued by ICS-CERT reports of two vulnerbilities in Rockwell Automation ThinManager and encourages the end-users to implement the risk mitigations provided by the vendor. ESB-2023.1720.2 – Cisco DNA Center: CVSS (Max): 8.0 A vulnerability in Cisco DNA Center could could allow an authenticated, remote attacker to elevate privileges. Cisco has released software updates to address the vulnerability. ESB-2023.1710 – Jenkins Plugins: CVSS (Max): 8.8 Vulnerabilities in a number of Jenkins plugins have been reported. Jenkins project has released updates for some vulnerable products. ESB-2023.1727 – Cisco IOS XE Software for Cisco Catalyst 9300 Series: CVSS (Max): 6.1 Cisco has reported a high-rated vulnerability in its Catalyst 9300 series switches that could allow persistent code to be installed by an attacker at boot time. Stay safe, stay patched and have a good weekend! The AUSCERT team

Greetings, Before we get too caught up in St Patrick's Day celebrations today, we wanted to remind you that early bird registrations for the upcoming AUSCERT2023 Cyber Security Conference end in two weeks. Don't miss out on this opportunity to connect with industry experts and gain valuable knowledge and skills to enhance your organisation's security posture. Additionally, don’t forget that Member Tokens will also expire in two weeks, so be sure to use them before then. You can ask your member representative for help with that, and if you’re yet to write your business case to attend AUSCERT2023, check out last week’s blog for some convincing ideas to include. Not to throw too much of a downer on celebrations, remember any popular event like St Patrick’s Day can potentially be weaponised for use by scammers. The same goes for impactful news stories, such as this week’s unfortunate collapse of multiple financial institutions in the USA and Latitude’s cyber incident. I’m sure we can all imagine “viral St Patrick’s Day videos”, “we regret to inform you of a data breach”, “you have a toll trip on 17/03/2023, to avoid penalty notice please pay immediately” or similar hooks to entice victims to click malicious links. It could be argued that good cyber hygiene at home also helps improve cyber resilience in the workplace, because staff may employ the same practices whether they are handling their own personal data or the information assets of their employer. In your next internal cyber awareness campaign, why not include some personal cyber hygiene tips – there’s plenty of content available online. Over the years we’ve also seen some very inventive training modules created in-house by some of our members – if you’ve designed one, why not share your ideas with other professionals in the AUSCERT Slack Channel? And now a selection of this week’s notable cyber security news articles, compiled by the AUSCERT Analyst Team: Fortinet: New FortiOS bug used as zero-day to attack govt networks Date: 2023-03-13 Author: Bleeping Computer Unknown attackers used zero-day exploits to abuse a new FortiOS bug patched this month in attacks targeting government and large organizations that have led to OS and file corruption and data loss. Fortinet released security updates on March 7, 2023, to address this high-severity security vulnerability (CVE-2022-41328) that allowed threat actors to execute unauthorized code or commands. Microsoft fixes Outlook zero-day used by Russian hackers since April 2022 Date: 2023-03-14 Author: Bleeping Computer Microsoft has patched an Outlook zero-day vulnerability (CVE-2023-23397) exploited by a hacking group linked to Russia's military intelligence service GRU to target European organizations. The security vulnerability was exploited in attacks to target and breach the networks of fewer than 15 government, military, energy, and transportation organizations between mid-April and December 2022. Commonwealth Bank details transaction abuse detection method Date: 2023-03-16 Author: iTnews The Commonwealth Bank has provided more detail of the data points and language models it is using to detect financial abuse in transaction descriptions. The bank’s AI labs team has a research paper published on arXiv [pdf] that describes the “multi-step approach” and also invites input from “the wider research community” to improve on the current method. What happens if you 'cover up' a ransomware infection? For Blackbaud, a $3m charge Date: 2023-03-10 Author: The Register Blackbaud has agreed to pay $3 million to settle charges that it made misleading disclosures about a 2020 ransomware infection in which crooks stole more than a million files on around 13,000 of the cloud software slinger's customers. According to America's financial watchdog, the SEC, Blackbaud will cough up the cash – without admitting or denying the regulator's findings – and will cease and desist from committing any further violations. Why Healthcare Boards Lag Other Industries in Preparing for Cyberattacks Date: 2023-03-15 Author: Dark Reading As leaders responsible for prioritizing their organizations' goals, board members must push the cybersecurity agenda forward. Yet new research shows healthcare boards are far behind their peers in making cybersecurity a priority and understanding cyber-risks, despite the potentially severe consequences to patient safety and care. "Cybersecurity: The 2022 Board Perspective," a new global report from Proofpoint and Cybersecurity at MIT Sloan, found that cybersecurity is much lower on healthcare boards' agendas compared with other sectors. Although 77% of the 600 board members surveyed suggested cybersecurity is a top priority for their organizations, only 59% of healthcare directors concurred. ESB-2023.1515 – VMware Cloud Foundation: CVSS (Max): 9.8 A remote code execution vulnerability via XStream open source library affecting VMware Cloud Foundation has been reported. VMware has released an update to address the issue. ESB-2023.1535 – Tenable products: CVSS (Max): 9.1 A vulnerability was reported in Tenable products. Tenable has updated its compliance plugins and audit files to remediate the issue. ASB-2023.0057 – ALERT Windows: CVSS (Max): 9.8 Microsoft's Patch Tuesday included fixes for 56 vulnerabilities across Windows and Windows Server. ASB-2023.0055 – ALERT Microsoft Office, Office Services and Web Apps: CVSS (Max): 9.8 Microsoft has released its monthly security patch update that resolves 10 vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office, Office Services and Web Apps. ESB-2023.1557 – Adobe Creative Cloud: CVSS (Max): 8.6 Adobe's recent update for the Creative Cloud Desktop for Windows fixes a critical vulnerability that could lead to arbitrary code execution if exploited. ASB-2023.0058 – Latitude Cyber Incident AUSCERT reports a data breach incident affecting Latitude Financial which appears to have been affecting customers across Australia and New Zealand. Stay safe, stay patched and have a good weekend! The AUSCERT team

Greetings, This year AUSCERT is proud to announce that Rachel Tobac will be the keynote speaker at the AUSCERT2023 Conference. A well-known name in the cybersecurity industry as an expert in social engineering attacks, Rachel is also the CEO of SocialProof Security, the company she founded together with her husband. Rachel has a proven track record of hacking into Fortune 500 companies and is recognized as one of the top ethical hackers in the industry. Speaking of AUSCERT2023, some tutorials have limited capacity so if you haven’t already secured yours, jump onto the registration page now. We released details of the tutorials earlier this year to help you write those business cases for attendance at AUSCERT2023. And when you’re writing it don’t forget to mention that the tutorials are included at no extra cost, you’ll have the opportunity to learn about the latest cybersecurity threats and trends, and network with other cybersecurity professionals. Copy, paste, business case done! Although this is the 22nd annual conference, AUSCERT itself turned 30 this month. All of us are incredibly proud of that achievement, and we were honoured to celebrate together with many past AUSCERT team members and “friends of AUSCERT” this week at our birthday party in Brisbane. Many of those past team members literally built AUSCERT from nothing, during times when little else was available in the cyber security domain. Today, although our culture and values remain the same, we have shifted our focus where our members need it most: threat intelligence, incident support and cyber security education. Director of AUSCERT Dr David Stockdale, and AUSCERT’s Senior Manager Mike Holm spoke with IT News this week about AUSCERT’s proud heritage and our future direction. You can watch the video here. And now a selection of this week’s notable cyber security news articles, compiled by the AUSCERT Analyst Team: PoC exploit for recently patched Microsoft Word RCE is public (CVE-2023-21716) Date: 2023-03-06 Author: Help Net Security Patches for the flaw – which affects a wide variety of MS Office and SharePoint versions, Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise and other products – have been released by Microsoft last month. CVE-2023-21716 was discovered and privately disclosed by security researcher Joshua J. Drake in November 2022. It is a heap corruption vulnerability in Microsoft Word’s RTF parser that, if triggered, allows attackers to achieve remote code execution with the privileges of the victim. The flaw does not require prior authentication: attackers can simply send a booby-trapped RTF file to the victim(s) via email. Emotet malware attacks return after three-month break Date: 2023-03-07 Author: Bleeping Computer The Emotet malware operation is again spamming malicious emails as of Tuesday morning after a three-month break, rebuilding its network and infecting devices worldwide. Emotet is a notorious malware distributed through email containing malicious Microsoft Word and Excel document attachments. When users open these documents and macros are enabled, the Emotet DLL will be downloaded and loaded into memory. Fortinet warns of new critical unauthenticated RCE vulnerability Date: 2023-03-08 Author: Bleeping Computer Fortinet has disclosed a "Critical" vulnerability impacting FortiOS and FortiProxy, which allows an unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary code or perform denial of service (DoS) on the GUI of vulnerable devices using specially crafted requests. This buffer underflow vulnerability is tracked as CVE-2023-25610 and has a CVSS v3 score of 9.3, rating it critical. This type of flaw occurs when a program tries to read more data from a memory buffer than is available, resulting in accessing adjacent memory locations, leading to risky behavior or crashes. Akamai mitigates record-breaking 900Gbps DDoS attack in Asia Date: 2023-03-09 Author: Bleeping Computer Akamai reports having mitigated the largest DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack ever launched against a customer based in the Asia-Pacific region. DDoS is an attack that involves sending a large volume of garbage requests to a targeted server, depleting its capacity, and thus rendering the websites, applications, or other online services it hosts unreachable by legitimate users. Australian official demands Russia bring criminal hackers ‘to heel’ Date: 2023-03-09 Author: The Record A senior official in Australia criticized the Russian government on Wednesday for failing to properly police cybercriminals based in its jurisdiction. Michael Pezullo, a public servant rather than a politician — currently serving as the secretary of the Department of Home Affairs — said the Russian Federation hosted “the greatest density of cybercriminals, particularly those with ransomware,” in the world. ESB-2023.1478 – Fortinet Products: CVSS (Max): 8.2 A relative path traversal vulnerability [CWE-23] in FortiOS and FortiProxy may allow privileged VDOM administrators to escalate their privileges to super admin of the box via crafted CLI requests ESB-2023.1468 – Jenkins: CVSS (Max): 8.8 Multiple vulnerabilities found in Jenkins core and Update-center2 have been patched ESB-2023.1433 – Google Chrome: CVSS (Max): None Google released stable channel update for Google Chrome Desktop and this update includes 40 security fixes ESB-2023.1405 – GitLab: CVSS (Max): 8.7 Gitlab released security update for GitLab Community Edition (CE) and Enterprise Edition (EE) Stay safe, stay patched and have a good weekend! The AUSCERT team

Greetings, It’s the first week of Autumn, symbolising harvest and abundance as well as the yellowing of leaves and, hopefully, cooler temperatures. Cooling things down might give cyber security practitioners a chance to catch up with the latest phishing trend – mimicking OpenAI’s ChatGPT payment pages, apps and downloads to commit a variety of crimes. As with any trend or current event, criminals will find a way to exploit other humans for their own gain. There’s been plenty of talk about using AI to recognise when other AI has created content, but a new concern arose this week when a software update caused Replika users to “lose” their digital companion. Some felt genuine grief over the loss of a loved one, although hopefully that’s an example of a learned behaviour pattern that can be overcome – just like imposter syndrome which affects many cyber security professionals. At this year’s AUSCERT2023 Cyber Security Conference, The University of Queensland’s Shelly Mills will lead a tutorial on that topic: “Tackling imposter syndrome: using psychology to disrupt (cognitive) malicious activity”. Speaking of AUSCERT2023’s tutorials, don’t forget to get in quickly with your selections, as some tutorials have limited capacity and registrations are on a ‘first come, first served’ basis. We have however reserved some spaces which we will fill from our waitlist by selecting people that identify as women, creating more opportunities for skills-improvement as part of the conference experience. For this year’s “Back to the Future” themed conference you’ll notice we’ve finalised the tutorial schedule early, so that attendees can choose from the wide range of topics during the registration process. Members of AUSCERT have already received their Member Tokens – ask your AUSCERT member representative for more information. Here’s selection of this week’s notable cyber security news articles, compiled by the AUSCERT Analyst Team: Attackers stole LastPass data by hacking an employee’s home computer Date: 2023-03-01 Author: The Verge LastPass says that a threat actor was able to steal corporate and customer data by hacking an employee’s personal computer and installing keylogger malware, which let them gain access to the company’s cloud storage. The update provides more information about how the series of hacks happened last year that resulted in the popular password manager’s source code and customer vault data being stolen by an unauthorized third party. Albanese government to appoint Coordinator for Cyber Security, amid increasing threat to systems and data Date: 2023-02-26 Author: The Conversation The federal government is further stepping up its efforts to improve Australia’s protection against increasing cyber threats, with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Monday [today] announcing the establishment of a Coordinator for Cyber Security. The aim is to “ensure a centrally coordinated approach” to the government’s cyber security responsibilities. This would include coordinating and “triaging” action after a major incident. Critical flaws in WordPress Houzez theme exploited to hijack websites Date: 2023-02-27 Author: Bleeping Computer Hackers are actively exploiting two critical-severity vulnerabilities in the Houzez theme and plugin for WordPress, two premium add-ons used primarily in real estate websites. The Houzez theme is a premium plugin that costs $69, offering easy listing management and a smooth customer experience. The vendor’s site claims it is serving over 35,000 customers in the real estate industry. The two vulnerabilities were discovered by Patchstack’s threat researcher Dave Jong and reported to the theme’s vendor, ‘ThemeForest,’ with one flaw fixed in version 2.6.4 (August 2022) and the other in version 2.7.2 (November 2022). CISA Issues Warning on Active Exploitation of ZK Java Web Framework Vulnerability Date: 2023-02-28 Author: The Hacker News The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has added a high-severity flaw affecting the ZK Framework to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog based on evidence of active exploitation. Tracked as CVE-2022-36537 (CVSS score: 7.5), the issue impacts ZK Framework versions 9.6.1, 9.6.0.1, 9.5.1.3, 9.0.1.2, and 8.6.4.1, and allows threat actors to retrieve sensitive information via specially crafted requests. Westpac DataX to supply data to NSW government Date: 2023-03-02 Author: iTnews Westpac DataX will provide de-identified credit card transaction data to support multiple NSW government agencies. DataX will support the NSW Data Analytics Centre with functions like disaster recovery, NSW minister for customer service and digital government Victor Dominello said. The Data Analytics Centre, housed within the NSW Department of Customer Service, will use DataX’s insights to “further embed data-driven decision making across many of our agencies,” Dominello added. ESB-2023.1306 – Cisco IP Phones: CVSS (Max): 9.8 Cisco has released software updates that address multiple vulnerabilities in certain IP phones ESB-2023.1327 – Tenable.sc: CVSS (Max): 7.5 Tenable.sc has been updated to address multiple vulnerabilities in OpenSSL ESB-2023.1316 – OpenShift Container Platform 4.10.53: CVSS (Max): 9.8 Red Hat Openshift Container Platform is now updated to address multiple vulnerabilities ESB-2023.1345 – Sudo: CVSS (Max): None A privilege escalation vulnerability in sudo package utilized by Ubuntu has been addressed Stay safe, stay patched and have a good weekend! The AUSCERT team

Greetings, We are very excited to announce that registrations are now open for the AUSCERT2023 Cyber Security Conference – Back to the Future! This year we are doing a couple of things differently with our tutorials. Firstly, we have worked hard to finalise the selection and scheduling of tutorials earlier than usual. This means that attendees can select their preferred tutorials at the time they complete their conference registration. Secondly, to leverage the advantages of diverse groups working and learning together we are creating and holding space to improve the gender diversity in our tutorials. Some tutorials are limited-capacity, and registrations for these are on a ‘first come, first served’ basis, with additional requests going into a waitlist. This year we’re reserving some spaces in these tutorials which we will fill from the waitlist by selecting people that identify as women, creating more opportunities for skills-improvement as part of the conference experience! News emerged this week that malicious actors are leveraging the popularity of ChatGPT to create fake web sites and social media pages used to distribute malware and steal credit card data. This is a good reminder that malicious actors are extremely good at recognising what people are interested in, concerned about or titillated by, and ruthlessly use this knowledge to achieve their objectives. Here is a selection of the rest of this week’s notable cyber security news articles, compiled by the AUSCERT analyst team: GoDaddy says a multi-year breach hijacked customer websites and accounts Date: 2023-02-18 Author: Ars Technica GoDaddy said on Friday that its network suffered a multi-year security compromise that allowed unknown attackers to steal company source code, customer and employee login credentials, and install malware that redirected customer websites to malicious sites. GoDaddy is one of the world’s largest domain registrars, with nearly 21 million customers and revenue in 2022 of almost $4 billion. In a filing Thursday with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company said that three serious security events starting in 2020 and lasting through 2022 were carried out by the same intruder. Apple Updates Advisories as Security Firm Discloses New Class of Vulnerabilities Date: 2023-02-21 Author: Security Week The iOS 16.3 and macOS Ventura 13.2 advisories, originally released on January 23, have been updated to add three vulnerabilities. One of them is CVE-2023-23520, a race condition affecting the crash reporter component, which can allow an attacker to read arbitrary files as root. The other two security holes impact the ‘foundation’ component in Apple’s operating systems and they can allow an attacker to “execute arbitrary code out of its sandbox or with certain elevated privileges”, according to the tech giant. ChatGPT is bringing advancements and challenges for cybersecurity Date: 2023-02-21 Author: Help Net Security Understanding why ChatGPT is garnering so much attention takes a bit of background. Up until recently, AI models have been quite “dumb”: they could only respond to specific tasks when trained on a large dataset providing context on what to find. But, over the last five years, research breakthroughs have taken AI to a whole new level, enabling computers to better understand the meaning behind words and phrases. Medibank reveals attack vector and cost of 2022 security breach Date: 2023-02-23 Author: iTnews Medibank is going to take a $26 million half-year hit as the result of its 2022 security breach, and this is expected to climb to between $40 million and $45 million over the full year. The insurer has also gone public for the first time with technical detail of the attack. In a half-year results announcement [pdf], Medibank said the attacker first obtained the user ID and password used by a third-party IT services contractor. ESB-2023.1013 – ALERT FortiNAC: CVSS (Max): 9.8 A critical severity vulnerability affecting FortiNAC has been patched by Fortinet ESB-2023.1049 – ALERT FortiWeb: CVSS (Max): 9.3 A stack based buffer overflow vulnerability leading to RCE has been addressed by Fortinet ESB-2023.1090 – VMware Carbon Black App Control: CVSS (Max): 9.1 VMware has addressed an injection vulnerability affecting VMware Carbon Black App Control ESB-2023.1105 – Tenable.sc: CVSS (Max): 9.8 Tenable has released updates for multiple vulnerabilities in third party software leveraged by Tenable.sc ESB-2023.1142 – clamav: CVSS (Max): 9.8 A possible Remote Code Execution and Information Leak vulnerability have been fixed in the Clamav package Stay safe, stay patched and have a good weekend! The AUSCERT team

Greetings, This week the Australian government’s Attorney-General released its Privacy Act Review Report and is seeking feedback on 116 proposals for privacy reform contained in the Report. Feedback can be provided until March 31, 2023. The proposals are designed to address the following broad areas: Reducing confusion about what information should be protected and who should be protecting it Providing greater protection of personal information and increasing transparency of how information is used and protected Increasing enforcement of privacy breaches and streamlining regulatory schemes This is a good reminder of the importance of cyber security and privacy measures and how they should work together to ensure the protection of information. The latest episode of AUSCERT’s Share Today, Save Tomorrow podcast has just been released! In Episode 19 we hear insights and wisdom about cyber security risk and insurance from widely respected friend of AUSCERT, Ben Di Marco. Here is a selection of this week’s notable cyber security news articles, compiled by the AUSCERT analyst team: Cloudflare blocks record-breaking 71 million RPS DDoS attack Date: 2023-02-13 Author: Bleeping Computer This weekend, Cloudflare blocked what it describes as the largest volumetric distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack to date. The company said it detected and mitigated not just one but a wave of dozens of hyper-volumetric DDoS attacks targeting its customers over the weekend. "The majority of attacks peaked in the ballpark of 50-70 million requests per second (rps) with the largest exceeding 71 million rps," Cloudflare's Omer Yoachimik, Julien Desgats, and Alex Forster said. Adobe Plugs Critical Security Holes in Illustrator, After Effects Software Date: 2023-02-14 Author: Secuirty Week Software maker Adobe on Tuesday released security fixes for at least a half dozen vulnerabilities that expose Windows and macOS users to malicious hacker attacks. The Mountain View, Calif. company warned that the security problems exist on three of its most popular software products — Photoshop, Illustrator and After Effects. According to Adobe’s security bulletins, the Illustrator and After Effects patches carry critical-severity ratings because of the risk of code execution attacks. Splunk Enterprise Updates Patch High-Severity Vulnerabilities Date: 2023-02-15 Author: Security Week Splunk on Tuesday announced Splunk Enterprise updates that resolve multiple high-severity vulnerabilities, including security defects impacting third-party packages used by the product. The most severe vulnerabilities are CVE-2023-22939 and CVE-2023-22935 (CVSS score of 8.1), two issues that could lead to the bypass of search processing language (SPL) safeguards for risky commands. Both flaws affect instances with Splunk Web enabled and require a high-privileged user to make a request in their browser. ICS Patch Tuesday: 100 Vulnerabilities Addressed by Siemens, Schneider Electric Date: 2023-02-15 Author: Security Week Siemens and Schneider Electric have addressed a total of nearly 100 vulnerabilities with their February 2023 Patch Tuesday advisories. Siemens has published 13 new advisories covering a total of 86 vulnerabilities. The most significant vulnerability — based on its CVSS score of 10 — is a memory corruption issue that can lead to a denial-of-service (DoS) condition or arbitrary code execution in the Comos plant engineering software. Citrix fixes severe flaws in Workspace, Virtual Apps and Desktops Date: 2023-02-15 Author: Bleeping Computer [Refer AUSCERT Security Bulletin ESB-2023.0865, ESB-2023.0866 and ESB-2023.0867] Citrix Systems has released security updates for vulnerabilities in its Virtual Apps and Desktops, and Workspace Apps products. The addressed security problems are categorized as high-severity and could enable attackers with local access to the target to elevate their privileges and take control of the affected system. Citrix products are widely used by organizations worldwide, so it’s critical to apply the available security updates to prevent intruders from having an easy way to escalate their privileges on breached systems. ESB-2023.0871 – Intel Atom and Xeon Processors: CVSS (Max): 7.5 Intel has released firmware updates to mitigate high-severity escalation of privilege issue (CVE-2022-21216) impacting Atom and Xeon processors. ESB-2023.0879 – macOS Ventura: CVSS (Max): None Apple has released updates for macOS which include a WebKit patch for a new zero-day vulnerability tracked as CVE-2023-23529. ESB-2022.0969 – Siemens COMOS: CVSS (Max): 10.0 Siemens has released updates for the critical vulnerability in the Comos plant engineering software. This could allow a malicious cyber actor to execute arbitrary code on the target system or cause a denial-of-service condition. ASB-2023.0048 – ALERT Microsoft Windows: CVSS (Max): 9.8 Microsoft has released security patch updates for Windows which resolve 36 vulnerabilities. ESB-2023.0954.2 – Atlassian Products: CVSS (Max): 10.0 Atlassian has released an advisory which addresses critical security vulnerabilities in Git that affect multiple Atlassian products. Atlassian has rated the severity level of these vulnerabilities as critical. Stay safe, stay patched and have a good weekend! The AUSCERT team

Greetings, Today marks World Pizza Day, a celebration of one of the world's most beloved foods. Pizza has been around for over two thousand years, originating in Italy, and has since become a staple dish in households and restaurants all over the world. From classic Margherita to gourmet toppings, there's a pizza for everyone. As we celebrate the history of pizza, the AUSCERT team also took a moment to reflect on its own proud history. AUSCERT was founded in 1993, and next month will celebrate its thirtieth birthday. To mark the occasion, we released a blog entitled "AUSCERT: a proud history and bright future" which takes a deeper dive into AUSCERT’s history and outlines plans for the future. This blog truly is the essence of the whole AUSCERT team, summarising the combined efforts in producing our strategy for 2023. Late last year the team took a few moments away from analysing vulnerabilities, taking down phishing sites, delivering training and running a conference and instead attended two offsite workshops, one focused on “what is the culture of AUSCERT?”, and another on “what projects can we undertake to better serve our members?”. Combined with feedback from some of our members, our plans for 2023 are now underway. Next week we’ll share details of that, and don’t worry if you haven’t had a chance to give us feedback yourself – we’ve got plans to do that, too! Speaking of plans, very soon the AUSCERT2023 Cyber Security Conference registrations will be opened, so keep an eye on our announcements. Meanwhile here’s this week’s interesting news articles in case you missed them: New Wave of Ransomware Attacks Exploiting VMware Bug to Target ESXi Servers Date: 2023-02-04 Author: The Hacker News VMware ESXi hypervisors are the target of a new wave of attacks designed to deploy ransomware on compromised systems. "These attack campaigns appear to exploit CVE-2021-21974, for which a patch has been available since February 23, 2021," the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) of France said in an advisory on Friday. VMware, in its own alert released at the time, described the issue as an OpenSLP heap-overflow vulnerability that could lead to the execution of arbitrary code. MITRE Releases Tool to Design Cyber-Resilient Systems Date: 2023-02-03 Author: Dark Reading Cyberattacks are on the rise and enterprise defenders are protecting an increasingly expanding and complex attack surface. For many organizations, the focus is shifting away from prevention to resilience — to maintain essential business functions during an attack and recover quickly without losing too much downtime. Toward that end, MITRE has released the Cyber Resiliency Engineering Framework (CREF) Navigator, a free visualization tool for engineers designing cyber-resilient systems. OpenSSH Releases Patch for New Pre-Auth Double Free Vulnerability Date: 2023-02-06 Author: None The maintainers of OpenSSH have released OpenSSH 9.2 to address a number of security bugs, including a memory safety vulnerability in the OpenSSH server (sshd). Tracked as CVE-2023-25136, the shortcoming has been classified as a pre-authentication double free vulnerability that was introduced in version 9.1. "This is not believed to be exploitable, and it occurs in the unprivileged pre-auth process that is subject to chroot(2) and is further sandboxed on most major platforms," OpenSSH disclosed in its release notes on February 2, 2023. CISA releases recovery script for ESXiArgs ransomware victims Date: 2023-02-07 Author: Bleeping Computer The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has released a script to recover VMware ESXi servers encrypted by the recent widespread ESXiArgs ransomware attacks. Starting last Friday, exposed VMware ESXi servers were targeted in a widespread ESXiArgs ransomware attack. Since then, the attacks encrypted 2,800 servers according to a list of bitcoin addresses collected by CISA technical advisor Jack Cable. NIST Standardizes Ascon Cryptographic Algorithm for IoT and Other Lightweight Devices Date: 2023-02-08 Author: The Hacker News The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has announced that a family of authenticated encryption and hashing algorithms known as Ascon will be standardized for lightweight cryptography applications. "The chosen algorithms are designed to protect information created and transmitted by the Internet of Things (IoT), including its myriad tiny sensors and actuators," NIST said. "They are also designed for other miniature technologies such as implanted medical devices, stress detectors inside roads and bridges, and keyless entry fobs for vehicles." Put differently, the idea is to adopt security protections via lightweight cryptography in devices that have a "limited amount of electronic resources." ESB-2023.0705 – OpenSSL: CVSS (Max): 7.4 An updated version of libssl has been provided to address multiple vulnerabilities in OpenSSL ESB-2023.0745 – Google Chrome: CVSS (Max): None Google has released updated version of Chrome to address several vulnerabilities ESB-2023.0768 – Cortex XDR Agent: CVSS (Max): 5.5 A patch for a medium severity vulnerability has been provided by Palo Alto for Cortex XDR Agent on Windows Platform ESB-2023.0756 – tigervnc: CVSS (Max): 7.8 A privilege escalation vulnerability has been addressed in TigerVNC Stay safe, stay patched and have a good weekend! The AUSCERT team

Greetings, Beazley’s new Cyber Services Snapshot report confirms two things most of us probably expected: in 2023 the way threat actors use stolen data will continue to worsen, and the categories “fraudulent instruction as a cause of loss” and “cyber extortion incidents with data exfiltration” are both increasing significantly year-on-year. The report calls for organisations to “get smarter” about educating employees to spot fraudulent instruction tactics like spoofed emails or domains, however cynics may point out that the cybersecurity industry has been attempting this for a couple of decades already, so why isn’t it working? Perhaps some organisations haven’t adopted a top down approach to cybersecurity, with management leading by example. Senior management and board members have an important role to play here, and the AICD released a set of Cybersecurity Governance Principles late last year on this topic. Similarly ASIC has published a document on key questions for an organisation’s board of directors to consider. We know that time is precious for senior management and board members, so in 2023 AUSCERT plans to help our members provide timely briefings and short education courses for this type of audience. We’re also expanding our existing AUSCERT Education courses to include data governance training and assistance with implementation. In the short term however, there are still places available in the existing “Intro to Cyber for IT Professionals”, “Cyber Security Risk Management” and “Incident Response Planning” courses, so while it’s still quiet why not consider a quick, economical upskilling for your team? To further help our members, AUSCERT and WTW are hosting a live forum in Brisbane on Thursday, 16 February to discuss the key lessons from major cyber incidents and losses of 2022, and the impact on the cyber and technology risk insurance market, third-party risk assessment, and risk management. You can register here. GitHub says hackers cloned code-signing certificates in breached repository Date: 2023-01-31 Author: Ars Technica GitHub said unknown intruders gained unauthorized access to some of its code repositories and stole code-signing certificates for two of its desktop applications: Desktop and Atom. Code-signing certificates place a cryptographic stamp on code to verify it was developed by the listed organization, which in this case is GitHub. If decrypted, the certificates could allow an attacker to sign unofficial versions of the apps that had been maliciously tampered with and pass them off as legitimate updates from GitHub. Current versions of Desktop and Atom are unaffected by the credential theft. myGov report warns against digital ID fragmentation Date: 2023-01-31 Author: iTnews The federal government’s slow movement on digital ID risks creating “digital rail gauges … where a credential issued by one jurisdiction won’t be accepted in another," a review of myGov, which also covered digital identity, has warned. The report, in two volumes, [pdf] and [pdf], highlights how slow decision-making at the federal level, along with a lack of legislative support for digital ID, have left Australians vulnerable. Facebook two-factor authentication bypass issue patched Date: 2023-01-27 Author: The Daily Swig Meta has patched a vulnerability in Facebook that could have allowed an attacker to bypass SMS-based two-factor authentication (2FA). The bug – which earned its finder a $27,200 bounty – did this by confirming the targeted user’s already-verified Facebook mobile number using the Meta Accounts Center in Instagram. It exploited a rate-limiting issue in Instagram that enabled an attacker to brute force the verification pin required to confirm someone’s phone number. JD Sports says hackers stole data of 10 million customers Date: 2023-01-30 Author: Bleeping Computer UK sports apparel chain JD Sports is warning customers of a data breach after a server was hacked that contained online order information for 10 million customers. In data breach notices shared by affected customers, the company warns that the "attack" exposed customer information for orders placed between November 2018 and October 2020. JD Sports says it detected the unauthorized access immediately and responded quickly to secure the breached server, preventing subsequent access attempts. OpenAI releases tool to detect AI-written text Date: 2023-01-31 Author: Bleeping Computer OpenAI has released an AI text classifier that attempts to detect whether input content was generated using artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT. "The AI Text Classifier is a fine-tuned GPT model that predicts how likely it is that a piece of text was generated by AI from a variety of sources, such as ChatGPT," explains a new OpenAI blog post. OpenAI released the tool today after numerous universities and K-12 school districts banned the company's popular ChatGPT AI chatbot due to its ability to complete students' homework, such as writing book reports and essays, and even finishing programming assignments. KeePass disputes vulnerability allowing stealthy password theft Date: 2023-01-30 Author: Bleeping Computer The development team behind the open-source password management software KeePass is disputing what is described as a newly found vulnerability that allows attackers to stealthily export the entire database in plain text. KeePass is a very popular open-source password manager that allows you to manage your passwords using a locally stored database, rather than a cloud-hosted one, such as LastPass or Bitwarden. ESB-2023.0612 – Apache HTTP Server: CVSS (Max): 9.0 It was discovered that the Apache HTTP Server mod_dav module incorrectly handled certain If: request headers. A remote attacker could possibly use this issue to cause the server to crash, resulting in a denial of service ESB-2023.0600 – python-django: CVSS (Max): 7.5 It was discovered that there was a potential Denial of Service (DoS) vulnerability in Django, a popular Python-based web development framework ESB-2023.0567 – Tenable products: CVSS (Max): 9.1 This vulnerability allows a malicious actor with sufficient permissions to modify environment variables and abuse an impacted plugin in order to escalate privileges ESB-2023.0533 – git: CVSS (Max): 9.8 Multiple issues were found in Git, a distributed revision control system. An attacker may trigger remote code execution, cause local users into executing arbitrary commands, leak information from the local filesystem, and bypass restricted shell Stay safe, stay patched and have a good weekend! The AUSCERT team

Greetings, The latest episode of AUSCERT’s Share Today, Save Tomorrow podcast is available for download, featuring Jess Dodson (@girlgerms) chatting with Anthony Caruana about her Zero Trust journey. Frameworks or ideas like Zero Trust often emerge in fast-paced industries like cyber security, however they’re sometimes unfairly overlooked as a “buzz phrase” or “passing trend”. Jess’s excellent presentation at the AUSCERT2022 Cyber Security Conference gives a great, no nonsense explanation of what Zero Trust actually is and how you can implement it within your organisation. Speaking of the AUSCERT Cyber Security Conference, the AUSCERT2023 Call For Presentations CLOSES this evening! If you haven’t submitted your idea yet there’s still time, and remember we’re very keen to support first time presenters with additional mentoring. Many professionals have imposter syndrome, but remember your experiences are uniquely yours and quite likely very interesting to others! If you’re still stuck for ideas, listen to our joint presentation with Lidia Giuliano (@pink_tangent) and AUSCERT's Mark Carey-Smith, Bek Cheb and Mike Holm from Tuesday this week, “How to prepare a speaking topic and submit to a conference CFP”. Some additional resources are available on the Call for Presentations page, such as the padlet coordinated by Mark containing crowd-sourced ideas on “What makes a great conference presentation?”. In amongst imposter syndrome, too-much-compliance fatigue, not-enough-resources burnout, rising costs and other such worries, it’s easy to lose sight of the real goals of your organisation or business unit. At this time, your professional network and trusted partners can significantly contribute towards your success. Why not discuss cyber security topics with peers on AUSCERT’s Member Slack or other communities like the JCSC Slack, use free resources like this blog and AUSCERT Daily Intelligence Report to help you keep up to date and plan your year? Here's the top stories from this week, in case you missed any of them: QUT alerts staff, students to data breach – Security Date: 2023-01-23 Author: iTnews Queensland University of Technology has alerted 2500 staff and 67 students that their personal information was breached in a late December incident. Most of the university’s IT systems were taken offline, some of them for weeks, when the breach was first detected. The university said most have been restored, in an announcement posted last week to its website. Authorities shut down HIVE ransomware infrastructure, provide decryption tools Date: 2023-01-26 Author: Help Net Security Europol supported the German, Dutch and US authorities in taking down the infrastructure of the prolific HIVE ransomware. This international operation involved authorities from 13 countries in total. Law enforcement identified the decryption keys and shared them with many victims, helping them regain access to their data without paying the cybercriminals. PayPal Warns 35,000 Users of Credential Stuffing Attacks Date: 2023-01-20 Author: Security Week Online payments system PayPal is alerting roughly 35,000 individuals that their accounts have been targeted in a credential stuffing campaign. “On December 20, 2022, we confirmed that unauthorized parties were able to access your PayPal customer account using your login credentials,” the company said in the notification letter sent to the impacted individuals. According to PayPal, between December 6 and 8, 2022, a third party accessed user accounts using login credentials obtained elsewhere. The unauthorized access was eliminated on December 8. Suspected Chinese hackers exploit vulnerability in Fortinet devices Date: 2023-01-21 Author: The Record [See AUSCERT Security Bulletin 13 December 2022 ESB-2022.6458.2] Suspected Chinese hackers have been targeting a European government entity and African managed service provider with new custom malware. According to a report released by Mandiant on Thursday, hackers exploited a recently patched vulnerability — CVE-2022-42475 — in FortiOS, an operating system developed by U.S. cybersecurity company Fortinet, as a zero-day. IoT vendors faulted for slow progress in setting up vulnerability disclosure programs Date: 2023-01-24 Author: The Daily Swig IoT vendors are making slow progress in making it easy for security researchers to report security bugs, with only 27.1% of suppliers offering a vulnerability disclosure policy. The figure, based on the latest annual report from the IoT Security Foundation (IoTSF), compares to the 9.7% of IoT (Internet of Things) vendors that were reported to have a disclosure policy in the 2018 edition of the same study. Vulnerability management ought to be a cornerstone of connected product security, widely recommended in 30 cybersecurity guidance initiatives including the IoTSF’s IoT Security Assurance Framework. Universities offered software to sniff out ChatGPT-written essays Date: 2023-01-23 Author: The Register Turnitin, best known for its anti-plagiarism software used by tens of thousands of universities and schools around the world, is building a tool to detect text generated by AI. Large language models have gained traction since the commercial release of OpenAI's GPT-3 in 2020. Now multiple companies have built their own rival machine learning systems, kickstarting a new wave of startups developing products powered by generative AI. These models operate like general-purpose chatbots. Users type instructions, and they will respond with passages of coherent, convincing text. ESB-2023.0391.2 – ALERT iOS: CVSS (Max): 8.8 Apple released additional updates that may have been actively exploited against versions of iOS released before iOS 15.1 ESB-2023.0398 – ALERT VMware vRealize Log Insight and Cloud Foundation (VMware vRealize Log Insight) : CVSS (Max): 9.8 VMware released the latest updates for vRealize Log Insight which addresses multiple security vulnerabilities ESB-2023.0428 – MySQL: CVSS (Max): 9.8 Ubuntu reports several security issues in the MySQL and advises their clients to apply the most recent patches ESB-2023.0462 – PAM: CVSS (Max): 9.8 Ubuntu released an update that fixes PAM vulnerability which would allow unintended access to the machine over the network ESB-2023.0466 – Linux kernel (Raspberry Pi): CVSS (Max): 10.0 Ubuntu released an update to fix Linux kernel (Raspberry Pi) vulnerabilities which could potentially result in the execution of arbitrary code and denial of service attack Stay safe, stay patched and have a good weekend! The AUSCERT team

Greetings, Some of us are currently in “planning mode”, setting the tone for 2023. We recently blogged on the importance of cyber preparedness, giving tips for those responsible for briefing management on this topic. For the rest of us, if you’re thinking “another year, more vulnerabilities and data breaches”, you’re not alone. Although cyber security professionals are often restricted due to the sensitive nature of our work, it’s pleasing to note that during several recent cyber security incidents, the affected organisations reached out to AUSCERT and asked us to share important information with our community. “Indicators of compromise” or just “IoCs” for short can be shared quickly (and anonymously if required) to help others defend against similar attacks. In many cases these days, MISP (Malware Informaiton Sharing Platform) or even Slack is used to share this data. AUSCERT’s Member Slack is also good place to discuss what’s important and reach out to other like-minded professionals to compare notes on priority, sightings of threats and mitigation techniques. If you’ve got a story to tell at the AUSCERT2023 Cyber Security Conference, whether a success or a learning experience you’ve had, you’ll need to head to the Call For Papers website before January 27. If you don’t think you’ve got a story, why not register for the free webinar on Tuesday January 24, “I don’t have anything to talk about”? We’re really keen to support first time presenters! Too many default ‘admin1234’ passwords increase risk for industrial systems, research finds Date: 2023-01-18 Author: CyberScoop Easily guessed default passwords can be a malicious hackers’ easiest way to infiltrate a target. And all too often, according to research released Wednesday, operators of critical infrastructure companies aren’t updating off-the-shelf security credentials in internet devices connected to industrial systems. “We’re seeing a lot of the ‘admin1234,’ meaning that [hackers are] still going to be using default credentials in hopes that no one is changing the credentials for IoT devices — which is pretty accurate,” said Roya Gordon, security research evangelist at Nozomi Networks, a cybersecurity firm that specializes in industrial security. Over 4,000 Sophos Firewall devices vulnerable to RCE attacks Date: 2023-01-17 Author: Bleeping Computer Over 4,000 Sophos Firewall devices exposed to Internet access are vulnerable to attacks targeting a critical remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability. Sophos disclosed this code injection flaw (CVE-2022-3236) found in the User Portal and Webadmin of Sophos Firewall in September and also released hotfixes for multiple Sophos Firewall versions (official fixes were issued three months later, in December 2022). The company warned at the time that the RCE bug was being exploited in the wild in attacks against organizations from South Asia. Azure Services SSRF Vulnerabilities Exposed Internal Endpoints, Sensitive Data Date: 2023-01-17 Author: SecurityWeek.Com Cloud security company Orca has published details on four server-side request forgery (SSRF) vulnerabilities impacting different Azure services, including two bugs that could have been exploited without authentication. SSRF flaws, Orca explains, typically allow attackers to access the host’s IMDS (Cloud Instance Metadata Service), enabling them to view information such as hostnames, MAC addresses, and security groups. Furthermore, such security defects could be exploited to retrieve tokens, execute code remotely, and move to another host. Deserialized web security roundup – Slack, Okta security breaches, lax US government passwords report, and more Date: 2023-01-13 Author: The Daily Swig Slack suffered a security breach recently, “involving unauthorized access to a subset of Slack’s code repositories” according to the messaging platform. The company said that although no customers were affected, an internal investigation revealed that an unknown actor downloaded private code repositories on or around December 27. “We discovered that a limited number of Slack employee tokens were stolen and misused to gain access to our externally hosted GitHub repository,” a statement read. “No downloaded repositories contained customer data, means to access customer data or Slack’s primary codebase.” Researchers: Brace for Zoho ManageEngine ‘Spray and Pray’ Attacks Date: 2023-01-16 Author: SecurityWeek.Com Security researchers tracking a known pre-authentication remote code execution vulnerability in Zoho’s ManageEngine products are warning organizations to brace for “spray and pray” attacks across the internet. The vulnerability, patched by Zoho last November, affects multiple Zoho ManageEngine products and can be reached over the internet to launch code execution exploits if SAML single-sign-on is enabled or has ever been enabled. Fortinet Says Recently Patched Vulnerability Exploited to Hack Governments Date: 2023-01-13 Author: SecurityWeek.Com Fortinet reported this week that a recently patched vulnerability tracked as CVE-2022-42475 has been exploited in highly targeted attacks aimed at government organizations. The security hole impacts the FortiOS SSL-VPN and it can allow a remote, unauthenticated hacker to execute arbitrary code or commands using specially crafted requests. The vulnerability’s existence was disclosed on December 12, 2022, when Fortinet warned that it was aware of in-the-wild exploitation. The company at the time announced patches and shared indicators of compromise (IoCs). Norton LifeLock says 925,000 accounts targeted by credential-stuffing attacks Date: 2023-01-17 Author: The Record Nearly one million active and inactive Norton LifeLock accounts have been targeted by credential stuffing attacks, according to a statement from the cybersecurity product’s parent company. Gen Digital – which owns Norton LifeLock and several other consumer cybersecurity brands – told The Record that 925,000 inactive and active accounts were locked down after their security team identified a high number of Norton account login attempts. The incident centered around Norton Password Manager users ESB-2023.0269 – Firefox ESR: CVSS (Max): 8.8* Multiple security issues have been found in the Mozilla Firefox ESR , which could potentially result in the execution of arbitrary code, information disclosure or spoofing. Security Vulnerabilities can be fixed by upgrading to Firefox ESR 102.7. ASB-2023.0019 – Oracle Communications: CVSS (Max): 9.9 Oracle released a critical patch update contains 79 new security patches, plus additional third party patches for Oracle Communications. ASB-2023.0013 – Oracle MySQL: CVSS (Max): 9.8 Oracle’s most recent patch update contains 37 new security patches for MySQL. ESB-2023.0278 – Nessus: CVSS (Max): 9.1 Tenable has released Nessus 10.4.2 to address a privilege escalation vulnerability in Nessus versions 10.4.1 and earlier. ESB-2023.0277 – Drupal Core: CVSS (Max): None Drupal reports a vulnerability in Drupal Core which potentially could result in users with access to edit content seeing metadata about media items they are not authorized to access. Drupal advises its clients to apply provided updates. Stay safe, stay patched and have a good weekend! The AUSCERT team